# Backing up your files

It's always a good idea to make backup copies of your hard disk, in case you ever have a hardware failure or software problem that requires replacing or reformatting your hard disk.

My first recommendation would be to use a good backup program or disk imaging program that saves everything on your system. I consider that to be the safest approach, because it guarantees that you won't accidentally forget something important.

But some people prefer to do manual backups, in which case you'll want to know which PinballY files you need to back up. Or, there might be times when you just want to create a snapshot of your full PinballY setup. So for those situations, here's a list of all of the files needed to re-create your PinballY setup:

- Settings.txt in the main PinballY folder (stores all of your program option settings)
- GameStats.csv in the main PinballY folder (stores portions of the game metadata)
- Your entire Media folder tree
- Your entire Databases folder tree

The Media and Databases folder locations depend on your option settings. See Files & Folders for full details, but here's the quick summary:

- If you're using the "Share with PinballX" option, both folders will be in your PinballX install folder
- If you're not sharing with PinballX, both folders will be in your PinballY install folder by default
- However, you can override the default locations in the settings - if you're not sure, the Folders page in the options dialog will show you the current settings

PinballY doesn't store any settings in the registry, so you don't need to worry about that. (Many other programs do use registry settings to store user information, though, which is one of the reasons I think it's a good idea to use a proper backup program or disk imaging program, rather than making backups manually. A "real" backup program will usually include a full capture of the registry as an automatic part of the backup set.)

You don't need to back up the PinballY program files themselves, since you can always just do a fresh install to re-create those. But if you're not on a tight space budget for your backup media, the simplest thing is to just make a copy of your entire PinballY folder tree (plus your complete PinballX folder tree, if you're sharing media with PinballX).

## Recommended backup practices

This has nothing to do with PinballY, but as long as we're on the subject, I can't resist the urge to make some recommendations about backup practices in general. I see too many posts on the forums from people who had to re-build their systems from scratch after a hard disk failure or Windows crash. It's clear that a lot of people skip backups for their pin cabs. Don't be one of them!

Here are some key things I'd look for in a backup setup:

- It should be automatic. It should run on a schedule so that you don't have to remember to run it yourself. If you have to run it manually, chances are that you won't think about it for long stretches.
- The media should be remote - not physically connected computer you're backing up. Ideally, it should be off-site in a cloud service, since that gives you complete physical isolation. At the very least, it should be on an external hard disk that you don't keep connected to the machine, or on a separate computer on your home network. A hardware failure or Windows crash could corrupt every disk connected to the computer, and a malware attack could trash every connected disk. Physical isolation is the only way to be sure the backup media are safe against whatever disaster hits the subject system.
- It should be versioned. Versioning is critical for malware protection - if you discover an infection or lose everything in a ransomware attack, it'll do you no good to have a backup copy of the infected files. You'll need to be able to go back in time to an earlier version before the infection. Versioning is also an extremely nice safety net when you're making configuration changes, because it lets you go back in time to an earlier working setup if you mess something up.
- It should do a whole-disk scan. If you have to manually choose the files that get backed up, you'll inevitably miss something important.
- It should include the Windows registry as part of the backup, since Windows itself and many application programs store a lot of important configuration data there.