How to move FSX to another Drive ?

[dihelson 1]

Hello, Folks,

 

This is often, but I´ve not seen a clear answer to it yet.

 

See, my FSX is running at it´s best, almost no problem. I have tons of scenery installed on drive F.  I wouldn´t support having to install everything from scratch.

 

I´d like to change verything FSX to Drive D, another HD.

It´s not only a question of changing letters, I could do on windows 7.

I will have to move everything from F to D. I once made this, when I changed from a spin drive to SSD and all went well, but letters remained the same.

 

I´d like to move FSX to another drive, without having to install everything again. I wouldn´t support having to install everything from scratch.

I don´t mind changing path on scenery.cfg files.

How should I proceed ? Where do I begin ?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Dihelson Mendonça

[Lewis B 14]

To be utterly frank;

 

Install everything again is the correct way that is pretty much the bottom line, unless your a total SSD user and then things get complicated and strange with cloning and things that it sounds like you might already have experience with?

 

Anything else could and will cause issues dependent on how stock your install is. The less stock the more issues you can come across, some installers look for reg paths which wouldn't be correct so installing new things could be an issue. Other anti-piracy wrappers and or devices will be triggered if things get moved too much and so things could stop working..

 

Having said all that it IS possible to move installations but for your average joe user a reinstall is always the best bet and to be honest can be quicker than a manual move and editing of all those paths only to realize one of your fav add on's wont work because a path isn't editable etc.

 

Ive had some of our customers for example working years with a copy/paste fsx installation only for issues to then crop up almost out of the blue and the end result always being a correct reinstall of the sim.

 

thanks,

Lewis

[scott967 62]

Recommend using what Windows calls "junction links".   Basic procedure is to move the entire fsx folder tree from in this case drive F physical location to drive D physical location.  Leave (or recreate) the original, top-most folder (empty) on the  original drive.  Then create the symbolic link between the old folder and the new folder.  To windows and all apps, the files will be available at the original location.  Windows will simply redirect the access to the new location.  There might be a couple addons  that attempt to determine hardware unique IDs but that can probably be fixed via the addons' reinstaller process without having to actually reinstall the addon..

 

There's a couple of tools (plus built-in windows) to create the junction link, but I like this freeware one:

http://www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm

 

An alternative is if you are dedicating an entire drive to FSX (such as an SSD), do not assign it a drive letter, instead mount it in the original FSX folder on drive F (again, move all the fsx files/folders onto the new drive).

 

scott s.

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[bic 44]

There's a couple of methods in http://forum.avsim.net/forum/419-flight-simulator-tips-and-tricks/

 

I ended up creating a shortcut from the old drive/directory to the new drive/directory aka symlink for Linux users...

[fullmetal02 23]

Or you could clone the drive...

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

In my experience, you can copy the entire FSX folder to the new drive, and subsequently change the drive letters in Windows so that FSX is once again on a drive with the original drive letter.

 

Test it, and if all is well, you can delete the FSX folder from the original drive (which now has a different letter..).

[MartinRex007 390]

In my experience, you can copy the entire FSX folder to the new drive, and subsequently change the drive letters in Windows so that FSX is once again on a drive with the original drive letter.

 

Test it, and if all is well, you can delete the FSX folder from the original drive (which now has a different letter..).

 

Yep, this is exactly what I did and it worked like a charm...moved my FSX folder over to a SSD never looked back...

 

Martin

[Jim Padgett 11]

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/421783-how-to-move-fsx-to-new-drive/