As said, anything is possible, but I consider it quite unlikely that both hard drives would have decided to go totally broken just like that at the same time. After all, if both hard drives would become broken at the same time, how would RAID 1 help me then? Both of the mirrored HDDs in the RAID 1 setup would be broken.

And no, I don't keep them in cold storage for 10 years either, only to notice then that shit all the data has disappeared from them and/or the hard drives don't power up anymore.

It is odd to me how black and white this whole discussion is, some people seem to have the idea that an archive backup is something you keep on a 24/7 RAID/NAS system all the time and the data changes and is accessed on it constantly, or then it is something that you put in a cold safe at the bottom of an ocean for ten years, never to touch it in between.

What if I said that my main archive HDD is right there on my desk, and I connect it to my PC e.g. every two weeks? Is that so unthinkable? The secondary archive HDD may be in the closet and I take it out only when I want to rsync all new and changed data to it from the primary archive, and/or run a full data integrity check on it. Sometimes I also might swap that the secondary becomes the primary archive hard drive, and vice versa.

As for BTRFS, its point is not to prevent hardware failures, but e.g. bitrot.

It may be we are talking about totally different things. I am not talking about making backups of my Windows C:-drive and it various installed programs and data files, but my personal archives like all the old photos and wedding videos and whatever that I just want to keep (but rarely need to access them), or files I've downloaded a long time ago and want to keep.

GOG offline installers fall into this category as well. I like to keep them on USB hard drives, but I don't need to access them constantly. I installed e.g. Morrowind the other day from my GOG installer archives, before that it has been several weeks since I installed some other GOG game from them.

But as said at this point I don't consider it that important to keep two mirrored local copies of my GOG game installers, as I still feel I can also download them again from GOG servers, if needed. However, for my DotEmu and Strategy First bundle games that I can't download anymore, those I keep on two separate archive HDDs.

This thread made me realize that over 150+ games on my external hard drive aren't up to date. :(
This is going to take a while...

I'm not still entirely sure why i should back up games at this point. Sure i backup some data folders just because, and because apparently everyone thinks back upping contributes to a safety level, and we all know how high levels of personal security result in a general feeling in happiness overall ( as in if you have a steady supply of food to your disposal etc etc )

But right now i have like this huge 4 terabyte sata drive i have been plummeting all kinds of games on for these past months, from the 3,63 TB i still have 1, 92 TB storage room left at this point and really, my entire gog library will fit without a doubt.

I don't see GoG dying out soon, as it won't seem that my steady supply of food will dry out any time soon. Still, would it be smart to consider the eventuality that suddenly you would be in need of a game back up ? This sounds so, like maybe if that situation does occur gaming would be the last thing on my mind??

I am not fully sure how the bittorrent protocols works with restricting access to downloads that, but:

1. Humble Bundle offers optional Bittorrent links to their downloads, so you can either download your games directly from them, or using a Bittorrent link.

I haven't tried if it is possible to use those .torrent files even when you are on a separate PC without logging into your HB account, so I am only assuming you can initiate those downloads only if you log into your HB account. I would be surprised if they are not restricted somehow, ie. if I now gave you the .torrent for my HB Amnesia game download, you could also download it using that .torrent.

2. From the past I do remember some Torrent sites where you could download a torrent only if you had an account on that torrent site and were logged into it. Meaning that even if that torrent link was on some separate torrent site (be it Piratebay or whatever), it was useless to you unless you had a valid account on that separate torrent site.

I guess I should google for this so that I am not just assuming things... either way, of course GOG could still implement optional p2p protocol into their own Galaxy client, for example. I think other companies have done that in the past, ie. I recall the Battle.net client optionally using p2p to speed up downloads, and as you said, I also recall Windows 10 might be doing that, ie. users upload stuff to each others as well, not just downloading everything from MS servers...

God, it's been a while since I last updated my gog backup.

It would help if there was an official easy-back-everything-up solution to use.

I know about the community offered options for that, but in the past, the best solution for me was good old gog downloader.

Stores and services do close their doors even without worldwide apocalypses.

I think someone already mentioned e.g. what happened to DotEmu and Desura (people rushed to download their stuff from those sites when they learned they are going to close, DotEmu gave the customers several months to download their stuff why Desura was more spotty on that).

I've experienced the same also with Strategy First's own store from where I bought the SFI Super Bundle with lots of games, but I think Strategy First made it clear in the beginning that you ARE supposed to download and keep all your game installers from them, and they are not going to provide a download service where you can redownload your games as many times as you want, from here to eternity. (I don't recall if there was a time limit or count limit, how long or how many times you can download the games).

So, when those stores closed their doors, people didn't have more important things in their minds instead of securing their purchased games.

So I guess there are several ways to approach this:

1. You download your games beforehand, maybe bit by bit, when it is still easy and everyone is not rushing to download their stuff at the same time.

2. You decide to wait until it seems it might be a good idea to download your stuff, and hope it will be like DotEmu where you are given a relatively long period to download your stuff, and you can still download your stuff. And of course that you even receive the news in time that the store is closing its doors, and don't just sleep over it. I wonder how many former DotEmu customers didn't even hear about the demise of the store, those who might have even cared about it?

3. You just don't care enough about the games, ie. it is not that important to you even if you lost your access to them at some point. Who cares, you probably don't even care for your older purchases anymore at that point, or if you do, you can always buy them again from some other store (if they are available elsewhere), or try to download them from hazy torrent sites (possibly with embedded malware).

So there is no right answer to this, it just depends how much you care for your purchases, and what you believe will happen in the future. Downloading all your games now can be seen either as a smart move, or as a sign that games are too important part of your life and you wear a tinfoil hat, scared of the end of the world (and your gaming service).

I presume GOG doesn't want to officially promote the idea of downloading all your games, for various reasons like;

- Naturally it causes extra stress to GOG servers (the idea of using p2p/bittorrent would help with this though).

- They don't want it to make too easy for pirate sharers to download and keep their GOG game collections up to date, people who may be selling those games to others.

They prefer people would do it the Steam-way, ie. download only games they are going to play now, one by one. Close to the "games as a service" idea, even if you still have the ability to download all your games too, at least theoretically.

Reading the first line makes one think about the serviceable, spot-on, GOG Downloader. So yes, you answered yourself. That lean piece of software that was designed by default to create local copias of installers...

Wondering if Galaxy would be made to behave like that, at least optionally. Downloading installers that can be used manually, instead of behaving like the Steam client and directly installing games.
(And, now that they are at that, why not adding the chance to hide things like the social networking part of it.)
This. Anything related to downloading the actual games might be treated with care on the part of GOG, as it might be relevant when a game publisher is considering to publish games in GOG or not. Not just the safety of the system, but also the public perception of the systems used.

And yes, Windows 10 allows downloading updates from peers, optionally. As long as it remains optional, it might be great to have that in GOG. Just, see the paragraph above. Cand they make it safe? With people not being able to corrupt the data they share? With the system being not easy to hack? Being reliable for customers and looking acceptably safe for publishers? Hopefully!

Yeah, I know. I can see people going on a download spree just to keep everything up to date and overstressing gog's servers.

I don't mind Galaxy, really. For everyday use it's fine. The thing about the backup is that, in the end, save for some very rare, out of the ballpark occasions for me, I never really need it. I know it's important, but it ends up becoming that "thing that you'll eventually get around to doing some day".

And, to make matters worse, a few months later, you end up having to do it again, because of new games and updates.

Galaxy does that now, you can use it as a download manager to download the offline installers.

Honestly, if there was a page in Galaxy where I could just click on an option download: installers, goodies, both and then, click on game cases to start downloading, or even a download all button, I'd be content.

But, yeah, GOG Downloader was simple and very effective. RIP GOG Downloader.

Like I just said: there is. Just click on the Extra button.

The problem is how many screens and clicks you have to go through to get everything. And that increases a lot if you have a lot of games.

And I just noticed that Galaxy doesn't make it very clear that you have to go into each game's page, click Extras and then you'll find the offline installers there. It does have a "Download all goodies" button, but not a Download all installer pieces button (useful for games like The Witcher 3 that have multiple files besides the main installation files)

EDIT: My post was written before seeing your last post. :)

It's not that different from how the GOG downloader worked... I think it actually needed more clicks.