Is it possible to run FS9 from an external harddrive?

Yes.Your mileage may vary. (Performance)I have a good 250GB Seagate which FS2002, FS2004 and FSX Deluxe installed on it.I can fly FS2002 and FS2004 from it on any computer. Sometimes have to change the display setup.FSX only works from the computer where it was intstalled - which is not fast enough to fly - but that HD is my development center anyway - not my flying install.

I just bought an external (kind of cheap) Comstar 7200RPM 250GB HD because my 75GB internal was bursting at the seams.I have FS9 running off the internal and FSX with the SP1 patch and a whack of Genesis mesh running off the external and it flies very well. Actually , I'm kind of surprised, but the performance is very good.

Many thanks for the responses.This gives me another option to look into.Richard

I too would like to express my thanks. Just finished loading a re-install of FS9.1 and numerous GB of scenery on a 160GB Seagate external HD and experiencing great performance.

On my old rig I had FS9 and FSX running off an external Seagate USB 2.0 320Gb HD, including numerous add-ons & expansions (for FS9 that is). No problem whatsoever and no noticeable drop in performance.Since rebuilding my PC I now have much more internal HD space available so at present the external drive is just being used for back up and storage.

Best solution is to use BOTH. Put FS on one drive - external or internal, and your large GB's of scenery on the other one. Change the scenery .cfg to point to the location of the scenery, and you're done. Two drives, acccessed at the same time. Quasi-RAID!Allcott

I use a removable HDD rack. Works excellent. When I flight sim, I pull out my everyday HDD and install my Flight Sim HDD, which only contains Windows XP, and Flight Sim. No virus protection, no firewall, etc because I use this HDD just for flying, not surfing. I also have a "development/Test" HDD for flight sim. Before installing anything on my "flying" HDD, I test it first on my "development/test" HDD. Crazy me..I have about 10 HDD's in racks. I can be back in the windows 98 world in 20 seconds. Who uses windows 98 these days? I have to for software testing.I also make images of my Flight Sim HDD and add-ons, and guess what? I store it off-site. I'll never lose data in case of fire..I don't use this rack below, but it gives you an idea how it works:http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=405http://www.addonics.com/products/Saturn/aesmr.aspLee

Can I ask a dumb question.I currently do not have an external drive, but I am toying with the idea of purchasing one.Once the external drive is connected can you transfer say FS9 straight over from the main drive, or do you have to re-install the sim into the new location?CheersBC

Yes, FS9 can be transfered straight across; however, you will need to alter your FS9 Registry entries to show the new location. You could do this manually, but "FS2004Toolkit1", available from http://www.visualflight.co.uk contains a nifty utility called "FS2004 is Here" which does the job very easily.Personally, I just did a clean re-install.

I have considered doing as others here have posted - placing FS9 on it's own hard drive. How does FS9 perform with a faster, dedicated drive, higher frame rates or just load times?

Many thanks for the information.CheersBC

Haven't benchmarked performance, I'm sorry to say. I haven't noticed any really perceptable difference in load times (I fly in New Zealand and use a lot of photoreal scenery so load times are, by default, longer anyway ;-) ). Re: performance, well it appears to be the same as prior to installing on the external drive. How's that for a technical observation? :lolFor myself, it was simply a need to gain extra drive space for scenery, aircraft, et cetera (and the fact that my mobo would only allow me another 60GB, at max, if I installed a second, internal HD).

Has anybody tried an external firewire hard drive in Windows XP? I've already got quite a few controllers plugged into my USB slots when I fly FS9 but I've got an empty firewire port.Kim