How to prevent my save becoming corrupted

How's things? I lost a really good save about a year ago through the file being corrupted. Can't remember the exact problem with it now but it wouldn't load anymore. Anyway I'm back on the horse and having a great save. I'm 10 years in and full of dread that it'll become corrupted also. What's the best method of backing up my game? Does selecting "save as" and making a seperate save do any good?

Yeah course it does - I have two files, "Journeyman" and "Journeyman (backup)" and everytime I save I alternate between the two.

Works a treat

I always find it best having a few saves to be on the safe side. In preferences set auto save to Incremental fortnightly saves. At worst if anything happens you'll only have to replay a couple of weeks gametime. At the end of the season I archive the last save, and delete all the auto saves to free up space on my HD ready for the next season.

Great stuff cheers.

Every time I load my save game I will make a copy of it so that I know that I will always have a save that is usually only one away from the most recent save and more importantly works.

I obsessively create new saves at major crossroads, before I add new leagues, and every time I feel like I haven't created a backup save recently enough =) I keep some of these on a USB drive since I alternate between two computers. I do occasionally remove some of the older backups, just to clear up disk space, but I probably need to do so more aggressively. At this point, my save game version number is in the low 40s.

I may be taking it too far ;-)

I make new files every 6 months.

Yeah course it does - I have two files' date=' "Journeyman" and "Journeyman (backup)" and everytime I save I alternate between the two.

Works a treat [/quote']

or you could just use the rolling saves feature thats built into FM.

I also save the files under a new name when I move clubs.

I always use the 10 rolling save feature, it's fantastic.

Also refrain from using 3rd party software like real time editors as these have been known to introduce errors which could become apparent straight away or may not become a problem until further into your save's future. If you do decide to use 3rd party software, always keep regular backups of your saves.

Don't quit Football Manager immediately after saving a game. I think a lot of crash dumps occur because, especially with big save files, the game continues to write/organize information even after the "save progress bar" has completed.

Also a tip I was told by someone at SI (when I was playing FM10 and my saves corrupted) was to stop any of your virus/malware scanners from checking the FM directories whilst your game is on.

I have my scanner excluding several directories that FM uses, the main install, and then the sports Interactive folders in x:\users\username\AppData\local, x:\users\username\AppData\Roaming and x:\users\username\documents

alternating savegames are a must have for most games nowadays