PC Slowdowns ?

[caveman16]

Hey Guys and Ladies,   I "read" where many of you load your PC with lots of  GBs  of  files.   Does the Flight Sim "suffer" because of having the hard drive loaded down with many files and folders ?    How about the un-used aircraft in the "aircraft" folder ?   Wouldn't  the "PC" be faster if all the "extras" be put on a DVD and removed from the PC ?     Wouldn't the PC have that much LESS to sort through or "THINK" about ?       I'm always coming up with these "basic dumb questions".  However  - - -   I do appreciate your time and effort taken with my questions.      Thanks much.   caveman

[Gary R.]

You know caveman, I just posted a similar ??.  I had trouble with  my Drive F and will be reformating.  While moving files to update my back-up on Drive C I noticed my gauges folder was approaching 1 gigabyte.  Then I got to thinking and I recalled that my FS always seems to perform best on a clean install with a greatly reduced add-on content over what it eventually grows to.  I also recalled seeing programs in utilities libraries that examine your FS config and removed un-used gauges from the FS subfolder to a back up folder not associated with FS.  I wonder if there are similar programs for sounds and textures and effects.  I will do some testing and experimenting after I reformat "F" and have FS re-installed.  I will benchmark some things.

[Hussein Patwa]

Hey peeps.  Talking of full drives and files in general, I started having a massive PC clearout today.  The main thing I found that causes frustration and wasted drive space is having duplicate files.  So far, I've deleted 5GB and over 1,200 duplicates.  It's confusing to have them because you don't know at a glance if thyey're all the same version and what not.  Worse thing if when you do backups across multiple computers, then have to bring those backups back to your own computer as you'll often end up with whole folders that are identical.

Another thing that gets annoying after a while is having useless programs, or programs that do the same thing.  I currently have 6 programs that help with story writing, when in fact I only use one and it has all the features of the other five.  Just going to delete them all and keep the one that I always use.  It's always a good idea to have a few programs that have all the features you need than loads (often hundreds) of small programs that each speciallise in a particular feature.  Decide what you like, what you use, and forget the 'it might come in handy' mantallity - it's going to eat up your space and cost you in the long run in new hard drives.

I'm in the process of writing an article of software choosing and file management which will be published on my website shortly.

Cheers.

Hussein.

[caveman16]

Thanks Guys - -  Thought I was alone on this.    caveman