I bought MSFS on Steam, and because I didn't have enough storage on my c: drive, I told it to install on my f:.   So it installed about 1.6GB on c: and then the community and official directory on f:.   Now I want to move it to an SSD drive, but when I go on Steam and tell it I want to move the install directory, it only moves the data that was installed on the c: drive, not the community and official directories that are on the f: drive.   Can I just copy the f: directories to the SSD drive?  Doesn't Steam need to know where those directories are?    Thanks for any help.

Use Steam Mover 

Steam Mover - traynier.com

THanks!   I'll try it!

MFS is such a fragile and whimsical software that I wouldn’t advise unorthodox manipulation. 

This may or may not work... For you. It has worked for me with the Steam edition.

• Copy your Community and Official folders to a folder on your new SSD drive.
• Find your UsrCfg.opt file (for Steam installations it should be here: C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator)
• Edit the UsrCfg.opt file with a text editor (Notepad will work)
• Go to the very bottom of the file
• Edit the line InstalledPackagesPath "G:\FlightSim" to point to the new folder location.
• Save the UsrCfg.opt file

Done.

...jim

1 hour ago, JimBrown said:

This may or may not work... For you. It has worked for me with the Steam edition.

• Copy your Community and Official folders to a folder on your new SSD drive.
• Find your UsrCfg.opt file (for Steam installations it should be here: C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator)
• Edit the UsrCfg.opt file with a text editor (Notepad will work)
• Go to the very bottom of the file
• Edit the line InstalledPackagesPath "G:\FlightSim" to point to the new folder location.
• Save the UsrCfg.opt file

Done.

...jim

This work for MS store version too.

9 hours ago, JimBrown said:

This may or may not work... For you. It has worked for me with the Steam edition.

• Copy your Community and Official folders to a folder on your new SSD drive.
• Find your UsrCfg.opt file (for Steam installations it should be here: C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator)
• Edit the UsrCfg.opt file with a text editor (Notepad will work)
• Go to the very bottom of the file
• Edit the line InstalledPackagesPath "G:\FlightSim" to point to the new folder location.
• Save the UsrCfg.opt file

Done.

...jim

What did you do with all the other MSFS files that were on the old drive and the C drive?

11 hours ago, knich said:

What did you do with all the other MSFS files that were on the old drive and the C drive?

This only changes the location of the Community and Official folders. All other folders/files remain where they were.

Once the new location was confirmed to be working, the Community and Official folders in the old location were deleted.

...jim

53 minutes ago, JimBrown said:

This only changes the location of the Community and Official folders. All other folders/files remain where they were.

Once the new location was confirmed to be working, the Community and Official folders in the old location were deleted.

...jim

So the application is in the Program files but the sim still launches from that folder even though the Official folder is in another drive?

Has anyone tried copying the files to a different location and using a symlink to the old location?  I did this with DCS to great success, but MSFS seems much more fragile and finicky.  I'm under the impression this is how the add-on linker works, but haven't tried that yet, and as far as I know, only applies to the Community folder.

For me it was quite easy.  Used the Steam interface to make an additional steam directory on my other drive, used the same interface to move the game to it.  All within steam, worked great, all in all took about 10 minutes,  No problem.

10 hours ago, Mike S KPDX said:

For me it was quite easy.  Used the Steam interface to make an additional steam directory on my other drive, used the same interface to move the game to it.  All within steam, worked great, all in all took about 10 minutes,  No problem.

I am a little confused on this.  Can you list the steps?

steam 
 settings
  downloads
   steam library folders
    make a new folder on the drive of your choice

steam
 library
  right click game
   properties
    local files
     select 'move install folder'

win

3 hours ago, Mike S KPDX said:

steam 
 settings
  downloads
   steam library folders
    make a new folder on the drive of your choice

steam
 library
  right click game
   properties
    local files
     select 'move install folder'

win

Thanks...when I started sim it is now asking to re-install content 153GB.  How did you get around?  Did you copy your Community and Official to new drive?

Edit:  It removes your Official folder so you have to re-install.

Edited March 23, 20215 yr by knich

I've just tried this with the MS Store version without any luck

I moved the Official and the Community folders to a new location with a shorter folder name (D:\Games\MSFS).  Changed the folder location in UserCfg.opt to reflect the new folder I created however when I run the sim I get "you are missing packages that are essential to run Microsoft flight simulator please update the application and try again" during loading.  There are no options apart from exiting at that point.

Any suggestions ?