MSFS folder size

[laurieg 0]

I have assigned a 250Gb SSD to MSFS.  (I thought that would be enough).  I have just seen that there is another update of 85Gb approx needed to download.  When i tried i was told there was not enough space on the drive!  243Gb used.  Surely, all these updates are not all new content, just overwrites for bug fixes etc?  Does the program keep previous update downloads?  I do have an empty 1Tb M2 but will this be enough!!!!!!! 

[orchestra_nl 931]

MSFS takes ~32 GB of space on my C-drive and ~350GB on my dedicated flightsim drive.
If I left out all my third party addons MSFS would still take up >165GB on my dedicated drive.

Keep in mind that every World Update will add several GB's to the sim, unless you choose not to install these. Also, MSFS might need some additional space temporarily during the update process.

250GB is on the small side, even without addons. I expect with a 1 TB drive you should be OK for at least a few years.

[laurieg 0]

Thanks for that.  I suppose I was in denial about the size of my drive!  Now comes the bit about swapping over the drive.  I bet it isn't as straight forward as copy/paste or clone!

[webranger 186]

I have a 465 GB SSD and its got 58GB left, wondering how long that will last.   Maybe time to look at 1 TB SSD's?

[orchestra_nl 931]

2 hours ago, laurieg said:

Thanks for that.  I suppose I was in denial about the size of my drive!  Now comes the bit about swapping over the drive.  I bet it isn't as straight forward as copy/paste or clone!

It could be.

If you have a dedicated drive for MSFS you can probably just copy the data to the new drive, then change the drive letter of the new drive to the one you are currently using.

[lagaffe 203]

The next update SU (18/11/21) required 33.34 GB (+ 1.12GB on the WindowsApps) and not 85GB.

[fppilot 4,371]

2 hours ago, webranger said:

I have a 465 GB SSD and its got 58GB left, wondering how long that will last.   Maybe time to look at 1 TB SSD's?

Fortunately I started with a 1 TB SSD that holds my MSFS installation.  Currently 473 GB in use, but my usage on that drive includes a handful of utilities, documents, photos, and music.  Roughly 60 GB that is not MSFS related.

I store MSFS addons in a dedicated folder set that use with the Addons LInker.  Those addons account for 100 GB of the 473 GB.  90 of those 100 GB are freeware addon scenery, mostly GA airports.

At one time I was over 600 GB consumed on that drive.  I took a look at what was consuming space.  At the time I was keeping downloaded freeware .zip and .rar files for backup. Recognizing I could easily find and download them again if needed, and also recognizing many of them get updated anyway after sim updates, I deleted them, freeing up 100 GB of space.

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

5 hours ago, laurieg said:

I have assigned a 250Gb SSD to MSFS.  (I thought that would be enough).

500 GB would be better... If you keep your addons in separate folders, they can be moved to other drives as required.

[W2DR 1,860]

For what it's worth, my MSFS installation is 130GB. All up-to-date, plain vanilla, no add-ons.

[Sagoland 22]

Full Premium Deluxe version on Steam around 140 GB without addons.

 

Edited November 11, 2021 by Sagoland