Have to reformat hard drive. How do I protect TANE, TMR and DLC (Win 10)

[drewmcdan1]

Hello all,

I have been advised by Microsoft that the best way to fix a problem I am having with my PC is to format the hard drive and reinstall Windows 10. I did purchase everything from the Trainz website, and see that the downloads are still available. Is there anything I need to do to ensure I can run everything again? I am not sure if the software will have problems once the hard drive is reformatted. I hadn't gone too deep in the program, so I don't have much user created data that I am worried about saving, just want to make sure I don't have to buy the software again.

Thanks.

 

[JCitron]

Welcome to the forums Drew.

What you can do is backup your Trainz data.

The programs can be reinstalled, but the data is most important and can be reconnected, intact, with your reinstalled Trainz programs afterwards.

The programs themselves can be downloaded again from your My Trainz account, but more importantly get yourself one of those external USB hard drives such as a Seagate Backup Plus Drive. A 4 TB drive is around $100 or thereabouts, which should give you plenty of room. You need to save your data!

To find where you installed your data, if it is the default location, start up T:ANE and click on the install tab. This will show where your data is. Write down that path.

Open up Windows File Explorer go to that location and copy that folder to your back up disk.

Repeat this with TMR2017.

If what you are talking about as DLC from N3V's My Trainz/Simulator Central store, your content will be downloaded again once you reinstall and start up for the first time. Your other content, stuff from the DLS and installed third-party content from other vendors on the web such as Jointed Rail for example, will be intact if you have backed up your data.

When it comes time to restore your content, simply copy the data folders from your backup drive to another location on your hard drive.

It doesn't even need to be in its default location.​

I put my T:ANE data in a folder called TANE_DATA. I then pointed my install to that place and ran a database repair to reconnect my data when I reinstalled. The same goes for TMR2017 which works exactly the same way.

 

[slenderman8888]

you can copy the userdatas screenshots, local and original folders onto something like a portable external HDD to backup your screenshots and installed content then do the reformat and just reinstall trainz via the installation CD then go into content manager and click import content then go to your copied local and original folders and it should extract the content out of those folders i did this when i had to reinstall TS12
read this for info on backing up your data and DLC https://northwesttrainz.weebly.com/re-installing-trainz.html

 

[aussepom]

take a mirror image of the drive this is the save on to a another hard drive it must be at least the same size of bigger.
then do the refomat, you will have to redownload the full tane program. thats one way the other is to take all your work save as a CDP on a separate drive or on a thumb drive then once you have Tane back on just import them
hope that helps I had to do this twice. I hope I do not have to do this drive, its a one terabite sodid state drive. I took my work from win 7 and now on win 10 and win 10 is !@#$

 

[ledzeppelinfan1]

This is also a concern of mine. With regards to the external HD, if TANE is the only thing it's to be used for, why wouldn't a 500 GB HD suffice? They are only 20 bucks.

 

[JCitron]

This is also a concern of mine. With regards to the external HD, if TANE is the only thing it's to be used for, why wouldn't a 500 GB HD suffice? They are only 20 bucks.

That's a good size for minimal data, but there are many of us with much more than that. My current data folder is around 768GB.

 

[Saieditor]

That's a good size for minimal data, but there are many of us with much more than that. My current data folder is around 768GB.

Yes, it does creep up. I can recall setting up a backup folder with 1.2gb ... that was 2 years ago. It has crept up to 197gb in two years.

 

[pcas1986]

This is also a concern of mine. With regards to the external HD, if TANE is the only thing it's to be used for, why wouldn't a 500 GB HD suffice? They are only 20 bucks.

Remember that TANE is going to want a lot of data from that drive to "paint" a scene. Buy the fastest drive you can afford.