Thank you for that detailed advice, 1st fltsimguy.

 

Ok, going by what you have advised her, is it possible for me to move all my other sceneries such as FSDT, Flightbeam, Aerosoft, etc, etc to another partition and thus free up drive space and just leave FSX and ORBX on the main OS drive, i.e. C:\ ?

 

Now then this gets a bit complicated. Short answer is no. I mentioned freeware but commercial products with self extractors are different. Some commericial sceneries may, right at the outset, give you an option on where to install....should that be the case then it does not rely on placing specific files into FSX folders or similar so go ahead and locate it outside of your FSX onto another drive. I think some photosceneries might fall into this category. So you can just chose the outside drive locations. Some of these sceneries while they can be installed outside of FSX folder might locate a new folder under FSX with a configure module and might include say documentation for easy to find access. Both of these elements - modules and documentation might not really need to be placed into FSX folder but are there for convenience.

 

However, many commercial sceneries like FSDT sceneries (which I have) are unfortunately required to be installed into FSX and you have no choice in the matter. FSDT has some interesting use of scenery objects calls (objects models placed into a Misc category under "simobjects" that minimize the physical space required and scenery bgls that call upon a centralized location for loading objects into their scenery. And while I do not have a clear understanding on how the inner workings are managed, their scenery updater module might not function properly if scenery is moved and the scenery library is updated for the new location.

 

Not familiar with Aerosoft and Flightbeam sceneries.

 

Short answer if the installer allows you the option of setting installing location then your OK to do so into another drive. You are best to not mess around with moving sceneries out of their installed specified locations unless you really know what your doing and how the scenery actually work for turning on and turning off certain features. Moving sceneries may have some unintentional impacts like preventing the uninstaller to work properly.

Once again,1st fltsimguy, thanks for taking the trouble to write out such a detailed and very informative post. Ah, well, looks like I will after all now have to invest in a 2Tb hard drive and then hopefully use Acronis True Image to copy the existing FSX directory to the new drive, that way I can have my cake and eat it too! The recently-purchased ORBX will have to wait installation. You win some.....you lose some. C'est la vie!

Personally, if you can afford it having a separate drive is the way to go. Three weeks ago I have a drive failure and with my backup I was able to get FSX up and running quite easily. There are some complications to deal with when some programs backup your textures like GEX so knowing the architecture some helps. Several of my planes required reinstall but that was not too much effort. All of Orbx stuff worked like a charm particularly because I also backup computer settings and other stuff that gets installed into your user account.

 

I have learned the hard way, twice, about having full sets of backups for EVERYTHING, digital home movies, digital images, projects using applications software. I have a rediculous 10 separate HDs. I prefer, 1 and 2 terabyte drives ...larger ones require a long time to backup.

Actually, you can quite easily move any folder anywhere you want to (at least in Windows 7 but probably also in Vista: don't know about XP), even the Orbx-folders, by using the Windows junction option. You will fool the system into thinking the folder is where it should be while it is somewhere else.

 

DISCLAIMER: Try this at your own risk. The situation can be undone easily be copying everything back and removing one file (more about that later).

 

Imagine you want to move the Orbx folder entirely to another drive, so also out of the FSX folder, which is impossible under normal circumstances.

 

Let's say the current path to the Orbx-folder is this:

 

C:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\ORBX

 

Now move the entire Orbx folder out of the FSX folder to a new folder on another drive (if you want to), for instance here:

 

D:\Programs\ORBX

 

After doing that, open the command prompt (cmd.exe) and go to the folder where the Orbx folder originally was, in this example C:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Use the good old DOS-commands to get you there*. When you are there type this (I am using this example's folder names and path but obviously you have to change everything to your folder names and path, but do use the " where they are noted!):

 

mklink /J "ORBX" "D:\Programs\ORBX"

 

and hit Enter.

 

So that is mklink /J "name-of-the-folder-you-moved" "the-complete-path-to-the-new-location"

 

From now on the computer will think the folder is still where it was while it actually resides on another disk. Since the computer still thinks the folder is where it was, you will be able to install and uninstall new sceneries without any problems: you simply tricked the computer into thinking the folder is where it should be (in the FSX folder) but everything will be installed in the new location.

 

To undo all this, remove the file that's created by mklink (it creates a file where the folder originally was) and copy back the entire folder to its original spot.

 

* DOS commands

- to get to the root directory of the current drive type cd\ and hit Enter

- to get to another drive using the command prompt, type the letter of the drive followed by a : and hit Enter

- to get to another folder using the command prompt, type cd followed by a space and the path to the folder and hit Enter

@Jeroen. Man, you are an ace.Just what I was looking for. In between debating or waiting to get a 2Tb drive, then going the TrueAcronis route, your post here seems the best option for me, currently.

 

Thanks for that.

Actually, you can quite easily move any folder anywhere you want to (at least in Windows 7 but probably also in Vista: don't know about XP), even the Orbx-folders, by using the Windows junction option. You will fool the system into thinking the folder is where it should be while it is somewhere else.

 

DISCLAIMER: Try this at your own risk. The situation can be undone easily be copying everything back and removing one file (more about that later).

 

Imagine you want to move the Orbx folder entirely to another drive, so also out of the FSX folder, which is impossible under normal circumstances.

 

Let's say the current path to the Orbx-folder is this:

 

C:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\ORBX

 

Now move the entire Orbx folder out of the FSX folder to a new folder on another drive (if you want to), for instance here:

 

D:\Programs\ORBX

 

After doing that, open the command prompt (cmd.exe) and go to the folder where the Orbx folder originally was, in this example C:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Use the good old DOS-commands to get you there*. When you are there type this (I am using this example's folder names and path but obviously you have to change everything to your folder names and path, but do use the " where they are noted!):

 

mklink /J "ORBX" "D:\Programs\ORBX"

 

and hit Enter.

 

So that is mklink /J "name-of-the-folder-you-moved" "the-complete-path-to-the-new-location"

 

From now on the computer will think the folder is still where it was while it actually resides on another disk. Since the computer still thinks the folder is where it was, you will be able to install and uninstall new sceneries without any problems: you simply tricked the computer into thinking the folder is where it should be (in the FSX folder) but everything will be installed in the new location.

 

To undo all this, remove the file that's created by mklink (it creates a file where the folder originally was) and copy back the entire folder to its original spot.

 

* DOS commands

- to get to the root directory of the current drive type cd\ and hit Enter

- to get to another drive using the command prompt, type the letter of the drive followed by a : and hit Enter

- to get to another folder using the command prompt, type cd followed by a space and the path to the folder and hit Enter

 

Excellent idea. I am wondering, if one chooses this approach does having the data located on another drive impact the performance of FSX - ie is there a "fps" hit?

Does not seem too. I moved all my addon airports to another drive so I could keep my FSX drive below the 60% threshold, and have noticed no change in performance whatsoever. I am certainly going to try Jeroen's tip regarding ORBX addons. Thank you Jeroen, you are a champ.

 

I also have my Mega X Socal, Nevada, Reno & Ohau on a different drive, and you wouldn't know.

Thanks for that Julian. Worth sharing that.

No problem Rick.