By now, more or less, every computer user knows that they should be backing up there most important files to a separate hard drive, if not a different physical location entirely. The old adage states a backup isn’t valid unless:

  • it’s current
  • it exists in multiple forms, ideally with one being off site
  • it’s been fully tested

However, today isn’t for the preaching on the why’s and what’s of file back-up. Make a backup of your documents and photos – it’s that simple. No, today is about something that may very well be more important than photos – you’re saved game files!

I jest, if only a little; but save files associated with all your video games are likely considered pretty important to the gamers amongst us. While many games save their state within the My Documents folder – a folder you are probably already backing up regularly to begin with – not all games behave so nicely. If you’ve ever moved to a new PC, or worse, formatted and reinstalled an old one you’ve likely encountered a situation where you lost some progress in a game because you missed grabbing it’s associated save file. What about file corruption? I know it’s happened a few times in my life time.

GameSave Manager is a free application that can help automate the process of discovering, backing up, and restoring the save files associated with the installed video games. The execution of the software is pretty simple – GameSave Manager maintains and references a database that lists the file location for practically every game I’ve come across. The database of supported games is constantly updated and keeping your list fresh is trivial with the built-in update mechanism.

Upon launch, a scan for the installed games can be initiated and the results returned contain the full path to the necessary files to back up. Within the listed results locate the games in question and click Start Backup. You are then prompted for a location you wish to save all the files to, at which point GameSave Manager takes care of the rest.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, backups can be scheduled because, as we know, a stale backup because your forgot to maintain it is practically useless – especially with the progress snap-shotting that exists in saved game state.

Download GameSave Manager