FSX-MS Moving FSX..

[anty2313 0]

Good morning friends,

I've FSX installed in an SSD drive which, due to poor initial estimation, now is almost full.

Since, after five years of perfect and enjoyable use , just a simple thought about re-installation makes me crazy, I wander if there is a way to transfer FSX to another larger SSD disk without reinstalling.

I hope that you understand my problem and help me with some ideas 

Thank you in advance,

Anty

[vortex681 806]

The easiest way is to use a symbolic link to redirect Windows to the new location - see https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/.

Basically, you move your entire FSX folder to the new drive then make a symbolic link which fools Windows into thinking that it's all still in its original location. It's worth just copying the folder initially and renaming the original so that in the unlikely event that something goes wrong you can always go back to how it was.

Any add-ons are installed to the original location but Windows automatically redirects them to the new location.

[electricman 5]

you can move a lot off stuff like mesh and scenery to another drive using LinkMagic to make the connection so FSX thinks it is still on the same drive but the content isn't anymore; here is the link to download this freeware tool; http://users.pandora.be/jbranders/linkmagic2.exe

what you basically do is make a folder with the exact same name from the stuff you want to move on another drive and then use this tool to move the content over and make a link from the original to the copied folder on the other drive, works like a charm and mesh and scenery folders are usually the biggest in size so nice to get that space free again on your SSD.

I wouldn't use it though to move the whole of FSX, keep that on the SSD to keep speedy loading times.

Herman

[Jim Young 2,356]

What I did was move the files to the new SSD and then changed the Drive letter to be the same as the old SSD.  Once you move the files to the new SSD, you have to rename the Drive letter for the old SSD to another unused drive letter.  Then go to the new SSD and change that to the drive letter used by the old SSD.

If you need info on how to do this, just type in Windows search "changing drive letters".

Best regards,

Jim

[regen70 1]

I did exactly what Jim described  a couple of weeks ago and it worked perfectly. I also moved some photoscenery files from another drive to the new SSD and simply changed the corresponding root file drive letter in the scenery.cfg. Again, it worked perfectly with no issues.

[Fielder 3,670]

OK, I have a question. 

My case is that I have all my whole desktop stuff on a mechanical hard drive, which of course is slow to boot. The only drive letter is C. 

 

I want to put in an SSD drive and move everything over to the SSD.

 

Is this possible?

 

How would I do it?

 

I ask because everything is now is in the  c:\ path, both the FSX stuff and the system files. C:\Windows\ etc. 

 

Seems to me I would have to make a complete image of the old hardrive and move a copy of that image over to the new SSD drive?

 

Thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

[anty2313 0]

Thank you all VERY MUCH for your valuable (I mean it) detailed instructions.

As soon as i find all the necessary courage I'll try the big step.

Again, a BIG thanks to all.

Regards from Greece

Anty

 

[Jim Young 2,356]

7 hours ago, Fielder said:

Seems to me I would have to make a complete image of the old hardrive and move a copy of that image over to the new SSD drive?

That scenario would not work.  You would most likely have to reinstall FSX.  You could try moving the FSX folder over to the new SSD and then go to FlightOne and download their Registry Repair program to show the location of FSX.  You would have to delete the fsx.cfg and scenery.cfg and let them be rebuilt.  If you have a dll.xml and exe.xml, you would have to make sure those entries are directed to the new drive or reinstall at least one FSDT scenery.  Pretty complicated and I might be discussing and trying to figure out why you are getting the kernelbase.dll, ntdll.dll, and many other types of CTD's in the CTD Forum.

Best regards,

Jim

[Fielder 3,670]

ok , thanks, looks like I'm going to stick with FSX on a slow HDD (slow to boot up the system) , o well... thanks again for the information.

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

10 hours ago, Fielder said:

OK, I have a question. 

My case is that I have all my whole desktop stuff on a mechanical hard drive, which of course is slow to boot. The only drive letter is C. 

 

I want to put in an SSD drive and move everything over to the SSD.

 

Is this possible?

 

How would I do it?

 

I ask because everything is now is in the  c:\ path, both the FSX stuff and the system files. C:\Windows\ etc. 

 

Seems to me I would have to make a complete image of the old hardrive and move a copy of that image over to the new SSD drive?

 

Thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

If you clone the harddrive to the new SSD drive, and change drive letters, the system should boot from the new C: drive, the SSD.

If you just want to move the FSX folder to the SSD, you will indeed have to use the Flight1 registry repair app to change the location of the FSX folder to the new drive name.

[Fielder 3,670]

Thanks, Bert. I guess I'll give it a try now that you tell me it's possible. I found this 'For Dummies' article to help me thru the process... 

https://www.howtogeek.com/284677/how-to-upgrade-to-a-larger-hard-drive-without-reinstalling-windows/