Moving P3d To A Different Drive?

[LTCSZ 16]

This might be a moot question, but here goes...Is there any easy way to move P3d V4.4 to a new drive without re-installing the entire program? I am collecting more scenery, planes, etc., than I ever thought I would, and the drive on which I originally installed the simulator is rapidly approaching full...I would like to move the entire installation to a new SSD with lots of room, but I shudder at doing a complete re-install...Suggestions would be welcome...Thanks!

[Sartanius 399]

Seems reasonable that you could:

• Image the drive where P3D is currently located,
• Change the drive letter of the old P3D drive,
• Change the drive letter of the new drive to the former P3D drive letter,
• Restore the P3D drive image onto the new drive.

Although I don't see an issue with doing this, I am far from an expert.  Certainly others will chime in.

Good luck!

[Buffy Foster 133]

27 minutes ago, dmiannay said:

Seems reasonable that you could:

• Image the drive where P3D is currently located,
• Change the drive letter of the old P3D drive,
• Change the drive letter of the new drive to the former P3D drive letter,
• Restore the P3D drive image onto the new drive.

Although I don't see an issue with doing this, I am far from an expert.  Certainly others will chime in.

Good luck!

As long as your P3D wasn't on your C drive (ick!), this works just fine; it's pretty much what I did when I got a M.2 drive.

The only difference is that I put the M.2 in and copied stuff straight to it, then changed the drive letters to save an extra copying step.

[Sartanius 399]

4 minutes ago, Buffy Foster said:

As long as your P3D wasn't on your C drive (ick!), this works just fine; it's pretty much what I did when I got a M.2 drive.

The only difference is that I put the M.2 in and copied stuff straight to it, then changed the drive letters to save an extra copying step.

Excellent point, Buffy... thanks for clarifying.

[LTCSZ 16]

Thanks for the quick responses...I am confused on just what you mean by "imaging" the current P3d drive...Currently my installation is on my "D" drive which is not the "OS" drive...(That's still "C")...Thanks again!

Steve in Kansas

[Buffy Foster 133]

I just dragged my folder across to the new drive.  If you do the imaging, then you'd use whatever backup software you normally use. 

[Sartanius 399]

Deleted... cross posted what Buffy said 🙂

Edited January 9, 2019 by dmiannay

[LTCSZ 16]

So, "copying/dragging" will work as well as "imaging"...I have never changed a drive letter...Is it difficult? (Can you tell I'm new at this?)

[LTCSZ 16]

So, in order to annoy you guys one more time; This is what I would do:

Copy the Lockheed Martin folders from my current D drive to my new drive, lets say, "K"

Change the old drive, D, to a different letter

Change the new drive to D

But then, would that mess up any other programs that might be looking for references/icons on the desktop, etc.,

on the old D drive?

Thanks for your patience...

Edited January 9, 2019 by LTCSZ

[Sartanius 399]

6 minutes ago, LTCSZ said:

Change the old drive, D, to a different letter

But then, would that mess up any other programs that might be looking for references/icons on the desktop, etc., on the old D drive?

Your steps are right.

And yes... if you have other stuff on the former P3D drive (the one that used to be "D"), those shortcuts on the desktop would no longer work.  But the shortcut properties can be easily edited to point to the new drive letter.  Should be simple.  Just right-click on the broken shortcut and edit the path.

Edited January 9, 2019 by dmiannay

[vgbaron 3,503]

Depends on whether you are adding a new drive or replacing an old drive.

Fastest - copy(imaging is slower) old D to new drive - remove old d OR rename old d - rename new to D

all programs and flight sim links will work.

 

Vic

[Ian S 214]

Just an alternate option, 

I have my core P3D with windows on a relatively small 256Gb SSD and addons on a separate SSD. Just bought an additional 6TB drive just for Orbx. 

So you could just move your addons without a full reinstall. You dont need everything on the same drive

[somiller 694]

I've experimented with http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html

and it is a miracle for your exact situation. Basically, you move a directory to wherever you want to move it, then in the original location you create a link. It's so easy and seamless. I've not done this with my entire P3D directory, but I have moved several sceneries that were installed in the P3D directory, including all my Flightbeam sceneries, and it works great. The cool thing with sceneries like Flightbeam that use a scenery manager, is that it doesn't break the functionality of the scenery manager, because when the manager queries the original scenery location it encounters the link that seamlessly redirects it to the new location.

It really is stupid simple. I have even bought a new SSD to contain all my scenery, and I'm going to use the link tool to point to it on the new drive. Since this tool works so well, I may end up just moving my entire P3D directory instead.

Kind Regards,

[ArJunaBug 7]

FYI. You can use junction points to redirect a folder to a new location on any drive. I do this with about a dozen P3D folders to move them to other SSD's. Use at the command prompt.

    MKLINK /J "C:\Games\Prepar3d V4\ORBX" E:\ORBX

Or if you are already in 'C:\Games\Prepar3d V4'

    MKLINK /J ORBX E:\ORBX

or

    MKLINK /J "Addon Scenery" "D:\P3D\Addon Scenery"

Use the quotes around folder name(s) if there are spaces in it.

All programs will work using this. Any program looking for files in the first folder will be transparently redirected to the destination folder with no performance hit.