how do you backup your games?

Why not use a cd burner? They work pretty well.

When you reformat your drive and re-install everything you can make a back-up of your harddrive with Norton Ghost for example, that way you dont have to reinstall everything each time you format your pc. you just restore the back-up.

<i>The Statement Below Is False</i>
<i>The Statement Above Is True</i>

Yeah Notorn Ghost is a good idea. I keep meaning to do that myself but never get around to it although I'm planning a reinstall in a bit and I'll do it after that.

On the other hand get clone cd and make images of yur disks and u can then use them by using clone cds' virtual drive or failing that daemon tools but if u go down that root u will then need to crack yur games after u install them using fixes from www.megagames.com

Also once u do that u will need a new fix if u patch yur games at a later stage or sometimes the games won't patch at all.

"Its only when you look at ants closely with a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realise how often they burst into flames"

I think the real problem here is your addiction to reformatting.
Perhaps you should try some of the following:
AVG Anti-Virus
Sygate Personal Firewall
Ad-Aware SE
Spybot Search & Destroy
Disk Cleanup/Defragmenter

If you use Alcohol 120%, it will allow you to make an exact duplicate of an original CD onto either the hard drive OR a backup CD. You don't even need a crack to run it and you can update/patch the games from the OFFICIAL site. The only tiny drawback is that you can only play that backup CD on a computer that has Alcohol 120% installed and configured properly, which I doubt anyone would care about.

yeah and now some game companies scan youcomputer to see if you have it iinstall and "ask" you uninstall it./.. lol./

I work therefore I am conservative.
<A HREF="http://www.cameronwilliamson.com" target="_new">-={Psychotic Sociopath.}=-</A>

You can get no-CD patches from

<A HREF="http://gamecopyworld.com" target="_new">Gamecopyword</A>
<A HREF="http://www.megagames.com" target="_new">MegaGames</A>
<A HREF="http://gf.wiretarget.com" target="_new">Gamefix</A>

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Most games do not rely on the registry, so you could try partitionig your drive. For example, let c:\ be reserved for windows and apps. Have d:\ hold all your game installs.

This is basically how I do it... so when I format c:\ I don't have to worry about reinstalling/patching games.

The only new game that has shown a problem with this is UT2k4. But I solved that by comparing the registery before & after installing the game the second time around... (by saving the new registery files that showed up after install and exporting them somewhere safe).