One of the most annoying things that a computer gamer would have to do when they reformat their hard drive to reinstall a clean Windows, is risk losing all their game profiles and saved games. After spending a lot of hours playing the game to reach the level that you are in now, it would not be wise to start all over again and can be a big waste of your time. If the game itself provides a method to backup and restore the saved games, then it is all good and you’re covered, and some games will also save your progress online so the files are not saved locally anyway. However there are still a lot of games out there that don’t offer you a convenient way to backup and restore your saved games.
This is when SaveGameBackup.net comes into play. The main purpose of this free portable tool is to allow you to effortlessly backup and restore game saves with just a couple clicks. The problem with game saves is that different companies like to place these important files in various different locations all over the system and not in a single default directory such as the common folder “\Documentes\My Games”. That would be too easy. Currently the latest savegamebackup.net database is version 72 which was released on 3/27/2012 and supports an impressive 1496 games. You can view the complete list of the supported games by visiting this page.
To use SaveGameBackup.net to backup a game, download the program from the link at the end of this article, extract it and run sgbnet.exe. The program automatically detects the games that are installed on your computer and shows on the interface. First you must set the path where you want SGB to save the game backup to. After that, check the checkbox for the entry that you want to backup and click the Backup button. The backup will be saved into one single .sgbzip file. It’s worth checking for any database updates beforehand by clicking the update icon (bottom right in the group of 6).
To restore the backup, select the “Restore” tab, find the backup path of where the sgbzip file is, and click the Refresh list button. Click the Restore button and it’s done, your game saves are back. Make sure you’ve installed the game prior to restoring. Other than the backing up and restoring saved games, you can also use SaveGameBackup.net to share your saves with friends by sending them the .sgbzip file for them to restore on their computer. In the unlikely event that your game is not supported, there is the option to create a custom entry if you know the details about where the games are saved etc.
The Options tab contains additional settings such as not overwriting old backups, adding datestamp to filename, detection methods and switching to a different language. SaveGameBackup.net runs on Windows versions from XP SP3 to Windows 7 and requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile.
If you’re an avid gamer and have several important game saves on the system, there is a tutorial in the SaveGameBackup.net forum on how to set up the program as a scheduled task in Windows Vista and 7.
Thanks Ray for sharing…..will be much helpfuk……
another alternative is GameSave Manager
gamesave-manager.com/