FSX Move

[Brando14100]

Okay, so I am almost out of room on my computer hard drive. I'm down to less than 10 GB. I have an external hard drive with over 350GB stll free. I want to move my biggest folder on my hard drive (FSX, over 30GB) over to the external drive. Can I do that without uninstalling and reinstalling the sim and hundreds of addons? Basically, can I copy, paste the FSX and FSX SDK folders to a new drive and still expect it to work? I know I would need to tell external programs like ADE and FS Recorder where the new location is, but what else would I need to do if this is possible? Do I need to delete the FSX CFG? Also, would I see any performance decrease from moving to an external drive? Thanks for any help.

8-)

[packercolinl]

My setup is(or was)simply to run FS. I've got two internal 240Gb hdd with FS on the the master SATA drive with my old IDE as slave,holding all the extraneous stuff.

My main aim is to have FS running directly on the drive with the OS and as little as possible otherwise. This gives a 'direct' for the OS(defrag. all the time).

All other running programs that don't need a 'direct' read from the OS go on the slave. When running FS I actually shut down the slave.

What I am saying is that FS should stay on your main drive and shift everything else you don't need to the usb drive.

I believe that to get the best out of the system you do not need to be putting more lengths of cable between the program and the OS.

Col.

[jwenham]

Actually it is better to have FSX on its own drive. The main reason being that the FSX drive will not get fragmented anywhere near as much as the OS drive. EX: I just did my monthly defrag yesterday and mu OS drive was 23% fragmented where my FSX drive was only .03%

[packercolinl]

Another thought is that a transfer like that could cause loss of data.

A reinstall on a new drive would be best with defrag. with each addition of anything after that.

Col.

[mjrhealth]

You can simply copy the who;e fsx folder over to the new drive. Then run a regisrtry clean to remove all the incorrect data, then run the fsx path fix, pointing it to the new folder. You will have issues with some incorrect paths and may have to reinstall some things or upodate shortcuts, but its far quicker then reinstalling it all.

[grizzard]

How about uninstalling some of your other programs and then reinstalling them on the external hard drive instead?  I suspect you'll see a slow down if you move FSX to an external hd and it's possible that you'll end up making a phone call to MS in order to re-Activate FSX.  Or since hard drives are pretty reasonable right now you might pick up a larger faster one and then do a "clone"  (I use HDCLONE) to the new one. That way you'll have a newer faster FSX plus have a backup hard drive backup.  :)

[Daube]

You can simply copy the who;e fsx folder over to the new drive. Then run a regisrtry clean to remove all the incorrect data, then run the fsx path fix, pointing it to the new folder. You will have issues with some incorrect paths and may have to reinstall some things or upodate shortcuts, but its far quicker then reinstalling it all.

What is this path fix program that you mention ? Sounds cool, but I never heard about it ?

BValvs, I confirm you that IT IS POSSIBLE to move FSX to another folder or another drive. I did it some months ago. If I remember correctly, the various stuff I had to do to make it work was:
- correct the registry entries to put the correct path in them
- redeclare all of my addon sceneries (since they moved too)
- edit my FSX.cfg and correct all the paths inside, for the thrusted gauges for example
- check my various FS modules, like you mentionned already.
And now it works perfectly

[mjrhealth]

I believe that path fix is avaliable on avsim. just google iit, theer was a ver for fs9 as well. I still have my orig install on a sep partion just incase i need to copy some corruoted files, but i copied the origianl onto another partion doing just what i said.

[Brando14100]

You can simply copy the who;e fsx folder over to the new drive. Then run a regisrtry clean to remove all the incorrect data, then run the fsx path fix, pointing it to the new folder. You will have issues with some incorrect paths and may have to reinstall some things or upodate shortcuts, but its far quicker then reinstalling it all.

What is this path fix program that you mention ? Sounds cool, but I never heard about it ?

BValvs, I confirm you that IT IS POSSIBLE to move FSX to another folder or another drive. I did it some months ago. If I remember correctly, the various stuff I had to do to make it work was:
- correct the registry entries to put the correct path in them
- redeclare all of my addon sceneries (since they moved too)
- edit my FSX.cfg and correct all the paths inside, for the thrusted gauges for example
- check my various FS modules, like you mentionned already.
And now it works perfectly

Okay, that's what I assumed. I'll copy and paste tonight and then repair the installation. I hope it works.

The reason I don't just move other programs is that my FSX floder gets bigger almost every day, so it would only be a temporary solution.

8-)