Hi Robynne,
You could simply save your routes and session to CDPs in Content Manager if this is all you want to save, but I'm sure you want more than this just incase the inevitable occurs.
To avoid a future reinstall, I have copied the whole TS12 directory to an external drive using Windows Explorer. This can take many hours, perhaps even overnight if you have a lot of downloaded content. With everything copied you can simply restore this back to your main hard disk again should there be a system crash. This method has saved me a few times now.
In order to fit a complete Trainz TS12, including all your data plus the program files, you will need an external hard drive such as one by Western Digital. The 3 TB drives are about $150 USD thereabouts so you can probably pick up on up at a similar price in NZD, or close the equivalent. I purchased my last drive at an office supply store called Staples. I'm sure you have similar stores near you. If not you can order one online from Amazon, or visit one of those big computer stores you have near you.
The drives plug into a USB port and show up on your system just like a hard drive. There is no need to format them as they come already formatted. Don't bother with their backup programs, which are bundled with the drives because they are not always reliable. I had one go through the motions of a backup and only found out during a critical time that it had crashed without warning during many backups, but showed a successful back up message! The end result was a major backup of zero bytes of very critical data. Maybe these programs have gotten better, but ever since then I've been more paranoid about them. I simply just copy the complete directory from my main drive to the external and let it do it's thing. At least now I know I have a backup.
Hope this helps.
John
