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[edbro]

Is there a way to have MC limit the number of backups it keeps? Like maybe keep only the last 8 backups or so? I find I end up with hundreds of MBs in backups and I have to manually manage them.

Second question: Is there a way to export settings?

[jgreen]

bro--
1.  Backups are your friend.  "Hundreds of MBs" of backups doesn't equal 1/2 of 1% of a modern hard drive.  I go through and cull 3 out of every 4 of these once a month and it doesn't take 30 seconds.  30 seconds a month to preserve your data?  Come on.

2.  Half of the settings are in the registry, carved in gobbledegook.  Marko had a great system for backing this jive up, but when it came time for me to restore registry settings I'd lost, the blood ran from my face and I just started all over.  MC 11.1 has more saveable settings, so there's that.  Search Marko's posts and try his system for yourself, if you dare.   

[marko]

I use Genie backup manager for the job. It makes things so very simple. I use Genie because it's the only backup software I've managed to find that allows the user to include registry keys in the backup jobs.
Use Genie to create the task, schedule it to run automatically (set it and forget it) and restore when needed in a couple of clicks (without loss of any blood )

So, my Genie MC backup job includes:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver
this covers, amongst other things, all settings made in 'options'
rename from props saved templates
display bar customisations
navigational favourites

C:\Documents and Settings\<...>\Application Data\J River\Media Center 11 (library backup zip files excluded)
this covers the library itself plus the thumbnails and coverart

MC's installation directory
from here, I include the mega and mini skins folders and the visualisation folder.

MC's installation\data directory
from here, I include the custom art and custom rescource folders and a folder called 'screengrabs' that contains video thumbnails. (screengrabs may not be needed any longer.)

with all of this backed up automatically every night, I'm reasonably confident that every corner of my MC experience is covered. the only exception is the plugins. I found that after a fresh install, the plugins really needed to be installed properly themselves. backing up and then restoring produced some odd results! anyway, it's a good excuse to check for any updates to the plugins.

After a fresh install, (and with MC closed, of course) Genie can put all of this back where it came from in a matter of seconds, which is nice especially if you've spent some considerable time customising your copy of MC.

Personally, I would dearly love for MC to offer up its own "installation" backup system that would take care of this task for us, but untill then, the above works fine for me.