Don't erase old saves. Keep everything.

[Renevent]

I just hit F5 (autosave) every few minutes and before I do anything major. It keeps 3 autosaves, and everytime you hit F5 it simply rotates the saves and drops the 3rd save with the new save.

First half of the game I hit 'esc' and manually saved...but the # saves was growing exponentially and I found it was just easier to cycle between 3 saves with auto save.