For this episode we're going toJUGGLE KNIVES(This will be quite long, but the actual process is short and simple.)
Yeah, that's right. We're going to do something dangerous. We're going to play with Junction Link Magic.Junction Link what???
First, let me show you why you may need it.
You bought your first SSD for A LOT of money. It was 250GB, and man was it FASTTTTT. You installed the OS on it, and planned on installing EVERYTHING else on your old drive which is now drive E:.
And from now on you plan to use drive C: ONLY for the OS. Period. End of story.BUTTime goes by and you find that some stuff will not install on anything else but drive C. It doesn't even give you a chance. BOOM. Right to the C drive.
Time goes by and you find that C is getting full. But there was nothing that you could have done differently.
Now you start looking at the price of SSDs, and they've gotten much cheaper. Boy have they gotten cheaper. But not all that cheap, especially for the larger ones over 250GB. So all you need now is the money.
I was doing fine until Jetranger mentioned that there was a sale on a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar for only $8. (
Don't get excited. It's back to $44.99 now.)
Come on. A great airliner for only $8. Who could resist.
What I didn't consider was the size of all those files.
Yes. That is seven and a half gig. And it pushed me over, or perhaps I should say
under, my limit. I always try to keep the free space on my SSD to 100GB or more.
Now, I have to do something.
STOP THE PRESSES!There is a cheaper way.
Free in fact.Junction Link Magic.
What it does, in a nutshell, is to let you move folders (and the sub-folders in them) to another drive. When Windows or another program goes to the original folder on the C drive, it gets
transparently redirected to the data on the other drive.
When you install a program that wants to put data in that folder (on the C drive),
WINDOWS PUTS THE DATA IN THE FOLDER ON THE OTHER DRIVE.
AND THE INSTALLER DOESN'T KNOW THE DIFFERANCE!Another way to think of it, is this way. You know that little arrow on am icon that indicates that it's just a link to a file or program?
Your ORIGINAL folder will behave, somewhat, like that.
A click on a desktop shortcut is redirected to the file or program.
After using Junction Link Magic
the original folder will redirect requests to open, save, or run programs to the folder on the other drive.
Drag and drop something on to the original folder (now
acting like a link), and it gets deposited in the folder on the other drive. The link folder will always be empty.
I've tried to make it as simple as possible. But I think that I've over-explained enough.
BEFORE I START - GO TO THEIR WEBSITE AND READ THE WARNINGSI may have missed something but it all seems logical and simple.
There are several steps. And mine are a little different than the way they explain it. This has worked for me, but
if in doubt, follow their instructions.
HOW TO DO IT(What follows is a guide, and will probably not be EXACTLY what you see.)First create a target folder
on your other drive. Drive E: in my case.
Make a folder for what you want to move the data/files to. Because you should not rename it or delete it later, put a tag in the folder name so you can recognize that it's a special folder. In my case I name the folder for the one on the C drive and add "FROM C DRIVE".
So the plane folder
ON DRIVE E: is called
Sim Objects FROM C DRIVE.
And the new scenery folder
ON DRIVE E: is called
Scenery FROM C DRIVE.
The last thing that you want to do is to delete, or rename, either the original folder from drive C:", or the target folder at a later date.In this shot I'm going to move the data that's in C:\ATEST to E:\_atest. They suggest that you copy and paste the original folder to the other drive. Fine, just rename it so that there is no confusion about the folder on the second drive being a copy of the one on the C drive.
Move, or cut and paste the data into the new folder if it isn't there already.
THE ORIGINAL FILDER MUST BE EMPTY!Next, click on the old folder (C:\ATEST in this case), and click on the new folder on the other drive (E:\_atest).
When you click on the
[Create] button you'll get this popup where you can select the original folder (or
Junction link as they call it), and the destination folder.
You can go ahead and expand it so that you can find your folders with more ease.
To select your folders you'll need to click on the
+ next to "Computer" so that you can search for, and select, the source and destination drives/folders.
This time when you select the
[Create] button in the bottom left corner you'll get this popup.
Click
Yes to proceed.
If you stay away from the operating system folders there should be no problems. And even then you may not run into problems because Windows Vista, 7, & 8 use this too. But why push it, leave them alone.
The best thing to do is what I did. Create a folder on the C drive and copy something into it. Then create a folder on another drive. Move the data to the new folder leaving NOTHING in the original folder.
It must now be empty.Use Junction Link Magic to link the two.Test it by dropping something into the original folder (which will now have a curved arrow on its icon). The file that you just dropped should go to the linked folder on the other drive.
Once you are comfortable doing this you can move on to important files.
THIS WHOLE PROCESS CAN BE REVERSED IF YOU NEED TO. Just practice on test folders.
As I said in the beginning, I've moved about 24GB from FSX (the scenery & airplane folders) onto drive E and everything works perfectly.If you have a smaller SSD this should be of great help. If you want to buy a 256GB SSD but think that it may be to small in the future, you can get them
for as little as $160 now and move some files on to a cheaper hard drive.
At the moment my 256GB SSD has 112 gigs free,
with no problems at all. That's the way I like it.