I know this is an ongoing issue on these boards but I would be grateful for advice.Previous posters on other threads have identified AI aircraft and scenery addons as the main culprits and I plan to create a hanger for rarely used aircraft. I will also disable rarely used photosceneries. Apart from that my dedicated FS9 HDD is getting on a bit (3 years intensive use) and I would like to replace it. Obviously I want to avoid having to reinstall everything. Some folks have recommended 'ghosting' the contents of the FS9 drive on to a new drive without explaining how to do it. What is 'ghosting' and how is it done?I hope it is nothing to do with the dreaded Norton Ghost......Second, another poster recommended 'proper' defragging without saying exactly what he meant. What counts as 'proper' defragging?Thanks.

I know this is an ongoing issue on these boards but I would be grateful for advice.Previous posters on other threads have identified AI aircraft and scenery addons as the main culprits and I plan to create a hanger for rarely used aircraft. I will also disable rarely used photosceneries. Apart from that my dedicated FS9 HDD is getting on a bit (3 years intensive use) and I would like to replace it. Obviously I want to avoid having to reinstall everything. Some folks have recommended 'ghosting' the contents of the FS9 drive on to a new drive without explaining how to do it. What is 'ghosting' and how is it done?I hope it is nothing to do with the dreaded Norton Ghost......Second, another poster recommended 'proper' defragging without saying exactly what he meant. What counts as 'proper' defragging?Thanks.

They're just talking about making a duplicate copy of your existing HD onto a new one. If the drive letter remains the same then you're back in business. BTW, look closley at the HD you are getting, all WD hard drives are not the same speed. The colors designate the speed. You want black, in WD's case.Any good backup program will do to clone the drive. I use Acronis. BTW, you can clone your entire MS installation along with your "C" drive and move it to a new machine if you wanted, with all your FS stuff just the way it is now.Proper defragging is done with one of the many progranms that are designed to for just that. I have one that allows several different methods depending on what type of data retrieval you want. It arranges data on the drive from outside in or inside out of "last accessed". You could arrange all your FS data to be available for the fastest retrieve.Hope this gets you started. Just a matter of picking a good backup software and a good defragger. GLB

Thanks. I was planning to use a solid state drive for FS9 alone - will there be a problem with that or must I use the exact same HDD as the old one? Also, I doubt if the backup program will allow me to install a new HDD with the same drive letter as the old drive. How does that work? Is 'cloning' the same as 'ghosting'? I have Acronis which I use for partitioning. Can you recommend a defragger?Sorry for all the questions. :(

Hi, I use a freeware cloning prog. called " HD clone 3.9. free addition " to make a complete backup ( inc.op. system ) of my INTERNAL HD. I have a spare. HD, mounted in an EXTERNAL HD enclosure , onto which i make a regularupdates once a month . This way i have complete backup HD, inc. FS9, so if anything goes amiss ( virus etc or you want to replace your HD ), i just swap the HDs over and i am back in bis. It saves buying expensive back up software, CDs,etc and takes about 1.5 Hrs to clone an 100 Gb drive. No need to reinstall your Op. system again - ever ! Hope this helps. UPDATE - HD CLONE version 4.3 now available @ MajorGeeks.

I get the idea. Sounds like I need an external hard drive enclosure. Thanks for this, MPJ.