Since I mentioned this worked and it was suggested I put together a brief tutorial...   this is a method you can use to relocate your Prepar3d v4 Add-ons directory away from your system drive to keep it from, for example, eating up space on a small SSD.  I've tried this and it works just fine.

The first step is just to relocate the directory to its new location.  (I use MultiCommander for things like this because it's easier to see what's going on, but you can totally do this with Explorer).

This is what my Documents directory (on C:) and the top level directory on my sim drive (F:) look like to start.  Notice the size free of each disk as we begin.

And this is what we look like after the move.  Notice now that the free space on C: has gone up, and on F: has gone down.

For the next step, we need to drop to a command prompt and use the mklink command.   You'll replace the source and target directories with whatever you want to use in your setup.

Now, if you go back and look at both directories, you see that the add-ons directory appears on both C: and F:, but the disk space free hasn't changed on either drive. 

MultiCommander show links pretty verbosely.  If you look at it in Explorer it just looks like a shortcut:

 

Now anything that looks for the Add-ons directory in your documents folder will end up reading from the sim drive.  It's just that easy!

(You can use this technique with almost anything you want to move around without "changing" where applications think it lives.)  

Hope this is helpful!

Or you could place only text files (the XML file for the addon) in that folder and place the actual scenery or aircraft or whatever it is on another drive entirely.  There is absolutely no valid reason for an addon's files to be in that folder.  None.

Or you could add another directory to the Addon Discovery Path either by editing addons.cfg or from the command line (preferred method) as described here.

However this method  (like Ed's) will still lead to addons hard-coded to install into the My Documents folder cluttering up your system SSD unless you move them manually.  Packages using this method really should allow you to specify the install directory and automatically add it to the discovery path.

Having the adon.xml in the same folder as the content (rather than in My Documents and the content elsewhere) lets you use relative paths, so no editing is required to point to moved content.

 

Edited June 8, 20178 yr by lzamm
typos...

And if I have 3 extra SSD's with 100+ addon scenery , what then ?

Why don't you just set up your documents folder on a different drive to the operating system? For example I have windows on C and My Documents on D.

This thread cracks me up.   nothing needs to be installed in your Docs folder for the 1000th time.  You can install wherever you want.  Hell I have installed scenery for v4 by just pointing to my scenery installed on my other SSD which has v3 installed.

Unless you are really worried about that 4kb addon.xml file.  :)

 

 

8 hours ago, WarpD said:

Or you could place only text files (the XML file for the addon) in that folder and place the actual scenery or aircraft or whatever it is on another drive entirely.  There is absolutely no valid reason for an addon's files to be in that folder.  None.

There is not.  Nevertheless, we know that not everyone is going to follow the rules.   A2A, for example, have decided to dump things in there.  Your choices are to either move them after cleanup, leave the XML file sitting around, and then edit it to have explicit paths...   or just accept that some people are going to do the "wrong" thing and prepare for it.

Since we don't live in a perfect world, the latter is the path I chose.  I have things I'd like more to do with my time than check for every single add-on I install whether it's been done correctly and fix it if not.    But that's just me.

On 6/8/2017 at 5:38 AM, WarpD said:

Or you could place only text files (the XML file for the addon) in that folder and place the actual scenery or aircraft or whatever it is on another drive entirely.  There is absolutely no valid reason for an addon's files to be in that folder.  None.

Ed could you be more specific? I don't like to have P3D files and directory under /Documents, so is there a way to move them? I'd like to use only my D:/ dedicated SSD drive for simulator. How can I achive what you are talking about?

Put your actual addon files in another folder. Open the addon.xml file for your product and edit the PATH to show the new location.

 

Vic