I have a 'day one' image for Windows 7 taken after I had a working copy of my basic programs such as Poser installed.  I have a Paragon Dis Manager boot disk which should also get me out of trouble if that fails.  My runtimes are backed up once a month to a 2TB hard drive via an e-sata external hot plug in unit the drive then stays in a safe.  Each week I do a back up to another 2TB drive that is network linked.  Once a quarter it is all backed up to another external drive that is left elsewhere with a member of the family.

For software I use Karen's Replicator as my back up program which is free for personal use.  The beauty of this program is that it only backs up the changes to folders and files so the backups are quick.  The other advantage is the total folder structure is maintained so in the event of a reload you can strart it running and go to bed rather than stay up waiting for Windows to request the next incremental backup.  I have used it in anger and it works a dream.

Also check your runtimes for files you may not need.  I often find promos in the runtimes and duplicated files.  I do not use Daz Studio so I also delete any Daz related files such a materials/textures, it all adds up.

In the past I have archieved stuff on to DVD.  I use DVD-RAM which is re-writable but slow and more expensive than DVD-R.  It does however have better error correction and theroretically a longer life than other DVD formats.   I am not sure if this is ture but I have yet to have one fail.

All of that may sound paranoid, and you may well be right .  In my defence I spend a large part of my working life try it tell people ,sympathetically, that they have lost all their data because the hard drive is corrupt or has stopped spinning. 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.