Recently my save in Hitman Blood Money got corrupted. I'm lucky that I was saving in other profile, so the old profile is still working. But I hate when these things happen! :/
I'm sure you're not the only one. I did the same thing once, with Driver 2 cd. The mission in Rio de Janeiro (you need to follow a helicopter, or something like that) was freaking hard (IIRC), so I broked the cd.

I save before initiating a mission, have 2-3 saves during a mission if it's right before something pivotal, and frequently quicksave. I quicksave before initiating dialogue and reload to do a real save if it was something important and just go through the dialogue again. For stuff like Mass Effect I have about 140 saves by endgame. If I were limited by saves slots I'd exit and back up my saves elsewhere so I didn't have to lose anything. When I have the option to label my saves, I start out with "001-" and a descriptor.

Haha +1 for that post man, you made my day.
As for me, the saving system I use really depends on what kind of a game I'm playing. I usually save a lot, no matter the game, but whether I overwrite a previous save or create a new one depends on a couple of things. First, the game itself. I tend to use only one quicksave slot when I play FPS games and two or three when I play RPGs. The second variable is whether I'm familiar with the game or not, usually meaning more careful planning of save slot usage when playing a game new to me.

Actually, being in IT Tech Support for many years, I, and thousands of others, call anyone who DOESN'T turn off System Restore an idiot. It's the first place many, many viruses and other malware hide, and using it to restore a system to an earlier time reloads those viruses back into your OS.
Nothing wrong with using a re-writeable CD for game saves, and the like. Hell, at less than 10p each, you can just burn a normal CD as backup.
If you need to, that is :P

Sorry to break the act, but that was just a hypothetical situation. I mean, it happened to me too, but I was and still am quite able to control my anger an did no such thing as breaking a valuable CD. Not to mention this was Gothic we're talking about. The game more than made up for it in enjoyable gaming. Those two or three hours were wasted, but it was more of a tutorial anyway.
As for my saving stile, I use a tried and tested method of naming my saves 1, 2, 3,... and going through them by date, so I save over the oldest one. Also, if I feel like making an important save (final boss, important choice...), I just name it like that and don't save over. Simple and effective.

I save every few minutes on one single slot. If something difficult comes ahead or if i feel I've played a long time, I save on another slot, then keep on saving on the first slot. Whenever i have to make a decision regarding different paths on the plot, that earns itself a brand new slot. I usually name them "mission 1" or some such regarding the level I'm playing or things like "AAAAAHHH!!!" when I'm on a hard level dying constantly or "what?" when I don't know what the hell happened and I need to test the level and I'm pretty sure I'll reload a couple of times before I figure out what's going on.
I hate checkpoints. I hate replaying what i've already beaten over and over again just because i tripped on something a mere few pixels away from the next checkpoint (usually something stupid like a missed jump). I hate level boss fights that don't have a checkpoint shortly before the fight starts and only have them after you beat the guy.

I wasn't back in the day (I was 14-15 year old), but today I would never do something like that. And it was the only time I broke a game, don't think I was a maniac like this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSTczQAa_RM
This guy needs serious help. :p

three stalker games, 130 hrs, and I have never done anything other than quicksave. if something goes wrong that i can't recover i just accept it as a fact of life in the cruel, cruel zone.

You are truly a glutton for punishment. ;) Also there are a couple of cases in the series where the game reportedly becomes unable to be finished (such as one particular glitch in Call of Pripyat that can let you access a late-game mission area right at the beginning--if you do things there that solve the quest before you even got it you're in big trouble).
Er, that's assuming the system is actually infected in the first place. When and if you get an infection, by all means disable System Restore temporarily if you think that will help, but for normal, non-infected operation System Restore has few disadvantages and several enormous advantages. The vast majority of users don't have a full system backup procedure in place, so System Restore is capable of returning the system to a workable state far faster than doing things manually (even the Vista/7 startup repair can't detect certain problems, and even then it falls back on restore points for more major faults).

If the malware infects the existing restore point(s) in addition to the live system, restoring won't help. Personally I keep the restore points nowadays, though disabling them was one of the first things I did after any reinstall way back when I used XP.

Yeah, I was specifically talking about recovering from startup problems on systems that aren't caused by infections ("for normal, non-infected operation"); glitched Windows Updates are just one of the possible causes. On Vista and newer you should try startup repair first, of course.