Getting carbon copy versions (yes all legal)

[Arcamean]

My topic was ignored lasttime I dunno wrong forum? (no one tells me anything unless it's to punish me) At any rate, I've a heavily modded Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout NV. ALL I want to do is play my modded games on my laptop while I'm away.

 

I use Nexus Mod Manager but do play most of my games from Steam... help please I'd rather not spend my travel down time just trying to get it running. :/

[Werne]

Ok, I guess you want to clone your games to a different hard drive (in this case a laptop hard drive) in order to have them exactly as they are on the PC. Not sure if that's the case but you offered no explanation as to how/what so I have to guess that's it. That shouldn't be too hard to do and it's not illegal at all (provided that your games are not illegally obtained), I don't get why would anyone make a fuss over it. Anyway...

 

First you either need a constant connection between your PC and the laptop (WLAN won't do) or a way to connect the laptop's hard drive to the PC. Second, you need some software capable of cloning data (I assume you use Windows), there are a few programs that'll do the trick. Alternative solution would be booting a live Linux distribution from a flash drive and use it's built-in data syncing capabilities, but I assume you have no idea what I'm talking about so I'll skip that.

 

There are several different programs for Windows that can clone data, like Clonezilla, Mandriva Pulse2, etc. I'm not familiar with their functionality nor did I ever use them so you'll have to figure them out yourself. Once you're done the games should start, provided that you did the job right.

 

Of course, you need to have a graphics card on your laptop and not an integrated Intel one (post your laptop specs) and you would need to have enough room on your laptop HDD for your games. An integrated Intel card is usually able to run your games (FO3 tends to crap up on those, it can be solved easily) but don't expect fancy graphics or anything like that. And you'll have to fiddle with inis before actually running games (need to change graphics card info and resolution manually without resetting the inis), which I will explain after you post your laptop specs.

 

And yes, it's very much possible to clone the games onto a different machine. It's just a matter of know-how and having enough patience to wait till it ends. Shouldn't be complicated either.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Werne

[bben46]

What you describe is not illegal, and not all that difficult.

 

The cloning that Werne recommends may work for some and not for others - depending on the file structure the game uses. - It will work if you are cloning the entire hard drive, but not if you are 'cloning ' specific files - as that ignores files that may be stored somewhere else, or any registry entries needed.

 

For games that use a CD to install - and require the CD to always be in the drive - take the cd with you. Copy over all of the data files & save files - copying the game files will not work as the game MUST be installed using the CD or it just won't work.

For games requiring Steam - just install Steam on your laptop and use the same steam account - You can even install the game directly from steam. Steam allows this as long as you only play from one computer at a time. And no, you cannot play one steam game on one and a different steam game on the other as the games are registered to your steam account - and your account can only be running from one computer at a time.

 

Whichever kind of game, you still must copy all of the data, saves, ini & any supporting programs over. Some supporting programs, such as a script extender or NMM must also be installed from the internet instead of just copied or they don't 'hook' into the game properly. (there are free and you can install them on as many computers as you want)

 

The files you will need to copy over will vary from one game to another - look at the forums for each particular games to see what people are recommending to back up for that game. You can copy over a network - or use a usb for portability. DO NOT try to copy the registry from one computer to another as that can cause the computer to become bricked (about as useful as a brick and only good as a paperweight :pinch: ) Unless you know what you are doing stay away from the registry altogether.

 

What you don't want to do is have one computer with a legitimate version and the other with some pirated version - you WILL run into incompatibilities.