Offline installers via web browser every time. Also, think up front how you will:
A) organise the storage
B) collect information on what is there
I don’t use gogrepo as it doesn’t fit my setup, and I want my setup to cover all items, not just gog. So I have:
[series][subseries][game name] [year][platform]
The. Subfolders for type, e.g store, rob etc., subfolders for documents, save, mods, patches etc.
In this way I consistently store everything in a way I can automate checking and moving.
Then there is what is there. A lot will use excel with a sheet with all metadata on. I do myself currently as I ditched collectorz.com. Am looking at playnite which, whilst mostly a launcher (hence useless) can get metadata and stores the information in a c# database (well, will do in v9), which makes it accessible from sql and c# which is good for my programmed checks.
Next up you will need more than one drive, there is nothing worse than spending hours organising, getting metadata, downloading mods etc. And then the drive fails. It happens, no drive is infallible. Have at least 2 or better 3 copies. I have 3* raid 5 boxes each with 4 drives in now. Raid is not a backup, it just helps with drive failure. The three copies are the backup (as is th olde external drives I have). Now this can get complicated later when you need to see what is updated, and for that I recommend freefilesync. And excellent free tool which compares drives and copies/moves/deletes only what is needed saving lots of time.
Links:
Freefilesync:
https://freefilesync.org/
Playnite:
https://playnite.link/
The raid boxes I use: TerraMaster-D5-300-External-Enclosure-Diskless
Some other discussions:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/offline_backup_general_thread https://www.gog.com/forum/general/questions_for_those_that_back_up_their_games https://www.gog.com/forum/general/storage_and_organisation_discussion Also be aware of:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/provide_a_full_and_complete_changelogged_download_system Gog fails to provide basic information on updates, change logs, patches for offline users, lack of decent download options eg language packs for large games.