This will not be news to some readers, but it may be useful for others. Knowing that I needed more space for MSFS2020, which I have had on a 500 GB internal hard drive that was close to full, I had thought about getting an external plug-in drive as the easiest way to solve the problem. I have been reluctant to do this because of the assumption that performance would suffer, compared to what one sees on an internal drive. This has certainly been true in the past, but I can testify that this is no longer the case. I have moved MSFS to a 2 TB Crucial X10 Pro external SSD with 2100 read/write MB/S and see no decrease in performance whatever -- FPS at least 40 and perfectly smooth everywhere, even in photogrammetry areas using live weather. I should mention two things. First, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 type C port is required. Secondly, this drive came formatted in exFAT, which is not compatible with Addon Linker, so I had to re-format it in NTFS (easily done using Quick Format), after which AL works fine.

Alienware Aurora R11, 32 GB ram, Intel i7-10700F, GeForce RTX 2080 Super, Ultra/high  graphics settings

Edited June 3, 20242 yr by cobalt

You shouldn't see any real slowdown in flight (I run X-plane off a USB HDD), but what are your load times like?

No difference there either, compared to loading on an internal drive.

Why didn't you get a internal 2TB SSD?

Probably even less impact with MSFS 2024 as much of the IO will be cloud driven.

sp

Any addon scenery is loaded when msfs loads so whilst it will affect the time msfs takes to load, it should not affect performance once it has loaded initially.  However running msfs itself from an external drive is a big no no as the data transfer rate is way too slow.

2 hours ago, Bigmack said:

Why didn't you get a internal 2TB SSD?

Because installing it would be a challenge for my computer. Plugging in an external drive is far easier.

Edited June 4, 20242 yr by cobalt

2 hours ago, cianpars said:

Any addon scenery is loaded when msfs loads so whilst it will affect the time msfs takes to load, it should not affect performance once it has loaded initially.  However running msfs itself from an external drive is a big no no as the data transfer rate is way too slow.

I have seen no evidence of this whatsoever. Did you read my post? Bing map satellite data streaming works just as well with the external drive as it did with the internal drive. Check out the specs on the Crucial X10 Pro.

Edited June 4, 20242 yr by cobalt

26 minutes ago, cobalt said:

I have seen no evidence of this whatsoever. Did you read my post? Bing map satellite data streaming works just as well with the external drive as it did with the internal drive. Check out the specs on the Crucial X10 Pro.

I use a 2 TB external SSD for almost all of my addon scenery, which I link through the MSFS Linker tool. I have also noticed no performance issues. I do have the main MSFS program on my internal SSD, but for a while I had that on the external SSD as well, with similar results.
 

Cheers, Pete

Pete, I think the adage that "external drives are too slow for MSFS" is outdated, with much faster external drives now available. This is the main reason I raised the issue.

55 minutes ago, cobalt said:

Pete, I think the adage that "external drives are too slow for MSFS" is outdated, with much faster external drives now available. This is the main reason I raised the issue.

Agreed. One thing I noticed is that the MFS Addon Linker didn’t seem to work if the entire MSFS program was also on the external SSD. Did you happen to try this?
 

Cheers, Pete

1 hour ago, cobalt said:

Pete, I think the adage that "external drives are too slow for MSFS" is outdated, with much faster external drives now available. This is the main reason I raised the issue.

External or internal spindle HD's are not recommended for running MSFS because of the slow read times. SSD's solved a lot of those issues. I installed a internal 4TB SSD and a couple 2 TB SSD's. Solved all my slow reading and stuttering `issues.

54 minutes ago, PilotPete99 said:

Agreed. One thing I noticed is that the MFS Addon Linker didn’t seem to work if the entire MSFS program was also on the external SSD. Did you happen to try this?
 

Cheers, Pete

I have the entire MSFS on the external SSD, with no problems with Addon Linker as long as the SSD is formatted with NTFS, as I noted in the OP.

Cobal,

You said that you "MOVED" it to the external drive. Can I ask what method did you use?

 

Thank You.

Bill McCracken

I created an MSFS2020 folder on the new drive, placed the Official and Community folders in it, and changed the last line in User.cfg to the new address -- simple as that. (I had first tried the alternative method, which is to use the "move" function in Windows 10, but found that it did not work in this case).

Edited June 4, 20241 yr by cobalt