Vpin safeguards?

[Shamous]

Good day to all

I would like to get the opinions of  the people in the VP community on steps and ideas they have and how they’ve protected and safe guarded there huge investment of money and time. Anybody who owns a VPin cab knows how much time and effort you put in to making it just the way you want it and getting it to work with all of your hardware and software and getting things tweaked so it’s “yours”. A one of a kind personalized magnificent machine and any one of us would be crushed to lose it all. So what I’m asking it’s for peoples ideas on what they’ve done with their machines to help protect them or back them up to make it so all that hard work doesn’t get lost.  Myself my goal was to try to set up a system that if my hard drive should ever get infected or fail I can just pop in a duplicate mirrored hard drive and restart with very little to set up again. The only problem is I have yet to test that theory. I have mirrored my hard drive multiple times when I’ve felt I’m at a good place with my cabinet and everything is up-to-date and running well and then placed a date on it so I know when the last time it was mirrored. But being I’ve never had to actually implement this idea I don’t know if it would actually work. So I would like peoples opinions on if this is a possibility and if not what is another way to go. Of course the main things you don’t want to lose our all of the custom settings and layout of everything that you’ve had to do to make your cabinet function.
so please anyone who feels they have something  to Share. Whether it be an idea or suggestion, something you’ve done in the past or maybe even a horror story or problem they’re that they’ve dealt with or mistakes that you won’t make again. Lol

thanks for any input

Shamous

 

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[Badazzwi]

Cloning the hard drive should work fine as long as it’s going back into the same pc. I know people do run into issues sometimes when trying to put a cloned drive into a different pc. I bought a new drive to clone mine but haven’t done it yet. Hopefully I don’t procrastinate to long and end up with problems.

I highly recommend using a ssd if not doing so already as it will last longer and give better performance. I switched to one early on when building my vpin as my original drive started to die. Luckily I was able to pull most of the data off it before it did.

Hi my name is Barry and I'm a virtual pinball addict.

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Shamous, eleventy7

[Thalamus]

Use a SSD in the machine, it is faster, much more error prone to the fact that you shake the machine and will last just as long as the older Harddives because of the fact that most of your data is written once ( tables and backglasses ) and then only read. Wear of a SSD is when you read and write to the cells often, like a database. Of course, don’t buy the cheapest ebay drive. This is a very important piece of your hardware.

Cloning your drive is the fastest way back. A clone will give you a complete copy – and is a good solution.

But, backing up VP isn’t that hard either. The most important thing is – take backups as often as you are willing to loose the work since last. Cloning takes time, my way, in seconds – only slow the very first time, depending on how much data you’re going to back up.

I use microsoft synctoy, what it does is copy the changed files to a location. That location can be another drive, usb-stick, network drive – whatever. Unfortunately, it is discontinued in that they now want you to use one-drive. Available from sources outside of Microsoft still. You can choose between different policies. I choose to overwrite what I’ve got in the destination.

But, before I do, I run a essential thing, and that is export of two essential registry hives.

You are probably best off making a “backup.cmd” – putting the shortcut on the desktop or somewhere convenient – containing something like this. This I stole from Rob. Just change c:\util to you’re d:\backup or where ever on your external drive.

reg export “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Freeware\Visual PinMame” C:\Util\VPM.reg /y
reg export “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Visual Pinball” C:\util\VP.reg /y

( From a post on vpforums a while back – https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=43292&p=439359 )

Of course, take backup of your Frontend, the DOF, VP and your registry export.

Doing it this way, I rely on using the “one in all” installer. There is no reason not to use it. It is maintained by Toxie and he really knows what is best for you. It seems like xdmd might finally be booted out of the standard install, in favor of the much better flexdmd. I consider that an upgrade, and I believe the next version won’t rely on installing required .NET files over the internet.

As I said, cloning is great. But, don’t squint on the fact that sometime you might delete a table or something small, and you want maybe just a file or two back. Then it is much more convenient having it as regular files on a separate location/media.

 

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Thalamus.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Thalamus.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Thalamus.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Thalamus.

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Shamous, wrd1972

[jino0372]

What I use

I use a software called Cloudberry backup on all my personal computers including my vpin.  I have this scheduled to perform incremental backups daily to a local NAS and to the cloud using AWS S3.  From there I can perform file level recovery or full bare bones restore.  Cloudberry backup is free but somewhat restricted.  The pro license is $50/usd.  This is a one time cost not a subscription.  You do not have to use cloud storage.  It can be used with a NAS or portable USB HD or a secondary drive on the PC.  The software works with all the cloud storage vendors.

Testing and/or validation

The SSD on my vpin died within one-month of purchase.  It was a defective unit (Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB).  My backup restored to the original hardware and new drive (same model Samsung) without issue.  I was back up and playing in less than 30 minutes.  I haven’t tried a restore to different hardware but I have done many file level recoveries on other PC’s using this software.

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Shamous

[Peter222]

Free SyncFolder does the trick

https://www.microsoft.com/pl-pl/p/syncfolder/9nc73mjwhsww

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Shamous

[Mlager8]

Big proponent of Acronis True Image. It’s $50.00 but is that absolute standard in backup, full image or just folders, multiple modes, cloud support, automation, the works.

I’ve been using it both personally and professionally for years, I’ve even backed up disk images of our entire renderfarm blade server at work. It’s a couple bucks up front, but believe me, you will thank yourself later.

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Shamous

[Shamous]

Thanks Guys for the great tips.  I’m trying to figure out what type of backup will suit me best for the long run.  trying to future proof to some extent.  I like your idea Thalamus.  I already use SSD’s everywhere ( They are so much faster) And I use Macrium Reflect right now to make a clone of my hard drive every once in a while and I also backup my registry at the same time and save it on a flash drive and keep it with it.  But I do think that doing a continual backup would also have its definite advantages as well. especially since windows and many of the programs for V.P are constantly changing.  I’m not a big fan of cloud services yet (call me old fashion) but I’ve tried using a couple of cloud drive services and it just seems to me that there is just to much stuff going on in the background to make me comfortable.  I do have a NAS that I use for our home stuff (personal computer on our network) but I’m constantly finding out that it missed backups or there was problems with it backing something up and then not finding it about it until I check on things.  I have a Arcade Machine that I made a few years ago but its self contained now (not hooked to internet) because I Didn’t feel the need to update it anymore because everything works the way I wanted and I didn’t need to add anything to it.  So Making a backup of that I only do once in a great while just to save controller changes and high scores. But the V Pin I have to leave connected and up to date because of things like Pinball FX3 and orbital. So I want to make sure that if something should happen during a windows update or a download of something with a possible virus I have a quick repair back to what I had.

Thanks again guys!  And keep the Ball Rollin’

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[Thalamus]

Yeah. Well. I think that this thread contains many good advises. Tempted to put a link to it in the wiki to make it easy to find. I think, by your answer @shamous – you just have to decide what fits you best. You clearly understand the differences. It is nothing wrong in creating clones and diffs too.

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Shamous

[freneticamnesic]

Just get comfortable setting up your cab. It’s not so hard after you do it 5 times. :(

Punch it!

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[dcbenji]

I keep my tables folder, PinballY folder, rom folder, and NVram folder in Dropbox. This  keeps everything backed up and in sync between two different cabinets.

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