I want to install flight simulator 2020 on my SSD drive and then put all my other add-ons on my regular 2 TB blue drive. 
 

can I do this?

Yep sure can. I use MSAddons Linker to accomplish this. Available at flightsim.to.

https://flightsim.to/file/1572/msfs-addons-linker

Edited April 9, 20215 yr by dlermond

Works great, I use it to do exactly that!

And a useful thread to help you use Addons Linker here.

Thinking about this as well. A couple of questions for people who’ve done it:

1) Does it bring noticeable performance benefits?

2) what’s the best way to do it; simply move the folders from hdd to the ssd, or delete and reinstall?

14 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

1) Does it bring noticeable performance benefits?

It will certainly improve load times as the sim only loads what you've told it to via Addons Linker. You may well achieve better performance as there is less loaded in the sim too, but that may be more an anecdotal than proven benefit. I haven't personally gone as far as serious;ly comparing frame rates and other parameters

16 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

2) what’s the best way to do it; simply move the folders from hdd to the ssd, or delete and reinstall?

Simply move everything to your chosen drive, generally no need to reinstall. However, for any add-on which you used an installer for, it's probably better to delete and reinstall just to be sure the installer knows where everything has moved to.

Take the opportunity to create folder for everything if you haven't already, i.e. "Sceneries", with sub-folders for continents, countries, states and regions - as specific or general as suits you. Same for "Aircraft" (Airliners, Props, Military, GA etc). Just makes it easier to find what you want to activate or deactivate for your flying session.

On 4/10/2021 at 8:45 AM, scotchegg said:

Thinking about this as well. A couple of questions for people who’ve done it:

1) Does it bring noticeable performance benefits?

2) what’s the best way to do it; simply move the folders from hdd to the ssd, or delete and reinstall?

I can vouch for Addons Linker - it's a *superb* piece of work - and by  a very friendly developer too.

I'm not sure about performance gains. Maybe it decreases load times a little (as you only load the sceneries/aircraft you need) but, once in the sim, I think it's more or less "business as usual".

However - *managing* all your dozens (hundreds?) of add-ons is where the Linker truly shines. Organise your folders and corresponding categories sensibly and you can instantly load up a scenery set with all the corresponding airlines/liveries. **Also** - your static and/or AI aircraft will have region-specific variants.

As if that wasn't enough, it's just so easy to enable/disable individual add-ons to narrow down possible conflicts.

I can't imagine using MSFS without it.

As regards your existing add-ns: it doesn't matter where you decide to put them - the Linker can point to them and create a link in your Community folder for them. Once you've done the required file housekeeping, you'll be surprised at how easy things will be.

Adam.