I originally posted this on the "Games" forum, however, I got a lot of 'views' but no answers, so I figured maybe I had posted to the wrong area. Anyway, there is my original post:

I would like to download a computer game from Amazon as the game I want can only be downloaded. They don't sell a physical CD for this PARTICULAR game. My QUESTION is: Can I download this to a CD, DVD, or a FlashDrive so that if my computer crashes or whatever, I won't lose the game? If I can download it to a CD, DVD, or FlashDrive, can it be loaded onto my computer from either of those?
Thank youIt depends on how they offer this game. Most these days have an installer that you download and have to run which is like say 12MB in size and then once that is installed it then creates a download of the rest of the game and this installer also USUALLY has a utility built into it to check your install against the server and manage the updates of future launches.

For games like this its best to copy the entirety of the game to an external hard drive or LARGE 32GB flash drive. Then later if you find yourself having to reinstall the game, you can copy and paste the programs entirety to the location such as in program files of windows and usually you can create a shortcut to the launcher or the exe of the program to desktop and launch it and it will either run or run and require updates.

However if the game needs registry entries or to be added to a game client database such as what steam does with the steam client, usually you can tell it to install the game, then when it gets to the downloading portion. Abort the download, then copy the game to its normal default install location, and then restart the game client like steam has and it will pick up where it left off with attempting to download the game, BUT the game will be there and so it will shoot from 2% to 100% and register the game and you can play it.

Different games are easier than others to do this with, but most these days that are games purchased have piracy controls in them to make it difficult to copy the game files to a CD or DVD etc to be able to be installed later with ease. They generally need some tweaking or trickery to make them work as examples I stated above.

Very few games will allow for you to copy the entirety of the game to a external and then to another and run without problems without an install needed to register the game with the OS. World of Warcraft is one of the few that is easily transferrable, but not offered by amazon. They try to avoid piracy by requiring server authentication when starting the game.Please don't post the same question more than once. I locked the duplicate thread.