I haven't flown for a very long time.

Coming back, I see my C drive W10 boot SSD is nearing capacity - largely because of P3Dv5 and v4.5 Add-ons.  I have P3Dv5 on a 2TB HDD.

If I move the Add-ons to the P3Dv5 drive, will the sim still recognise them, or will they all have to be re-installed?

If it did I could free up a lot space on the C drive. It might even mean I could avoid a W10 reinstall. 

I'd be grateful for advice.

 

 

 

 

 

You may have to edit a cfg or two if you move the addon directory. If you have a spare usb drive, you could copy the contents of the addon directory then run P3D and see exactly what'll break and what will work after the move. 

That's a good idea! Thanks!

I'd have to move the Add-ons to the usb drive rather than copy them - if I understand you right.

12 hours ago, betelgeuse said:

I have P3Dv5 on a 2TB HDD.

Ouch! You really should replace that with an SSD. Read times will be much faster. There are utilities to clone a drive.

AOMEI Backupper is free and one I’ve used for years for backups.

With a larger SSD you could then move your addons to the new drive. Do just 1 and test it’s okay. Do the rest in slow time.

8 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Ouch! You really should replace that with an SSD. Read times will be much faster. There are utilities to clone a drive.

AOMEI Backupper is free and one I’ve used for years for backups.

With a larger SSD you could then move your addons to the new drive. Do just 1 and test it’s okay. Do the rest in slow time.

Thanks for this.

I wondered about cloning to a larger SSD.  Problem is I once cloned an FS9 install. I can't remember which backup program I used but it was payware.

It seemed to clone but the clone was a series of weirdly named files which I never understood and which I could not use. I still have the cloned disk sitting somewhere.

If I clone my current boot drive (C:) to a 3TB SSD, and then disconnect that original, will my PC boot and run just as before?  Will there not be problems with the registry?

9 minutes ago, betelgeuse said:

I wondered about cloning to a larger SSD.  Problem is I once cloned an FS9 install. I can't remember which backup program I used but it was payware.

I considered buying a commercial package but around 15 years ago AOMEI arrived and their free for home user Backupper has been excellent. I’ve replaced a HDD on a netbook with a SSD after restoring the contents of the old one including hidden partitions and it worked fine.

Backup was originally on a NAS box but copied to an external USB drive and restored from that. Took a few hours but was 100% successful.

In your case if you can attach the new SSD to the mobo it should be possible to clone directly rather than from a backup.

13 minutes ago, betelgeuse said:

If I clone my current boot drive (C:) to a 3TB SSD, and then disconnect that original, will my PC boot and run just as before?  Will there not be problems with the registry?

Not if the new SSD is configured in the BIOS to be the boot drive. The Registry contents will be identical as the data on the drive is identical. Only the size is different.

I used AOMEI Partition Assistant to adjust partition sizes. It all sounds a bit daunting I know. Ask any more questions if you’re unclear on anything.

9 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

 Ask any more questions if you’re unclear on anything.

I notice you are running W11.  I am still on W10. If I am going to invest in a large SSD would this not be the time to upgrade? 

Cloning wouldn't be appropriate after that. Do you think the Add-ons might still be transferable?

6 minutes ago, betelgeuse said:

I notice you are running W11.  I am still on W10. If I am going to invest in a large SSD would this not be the time to upgrade? 

Cloning wouldn't be appropriate after that. Do you think the Add-ons might still be transferable?

My older 2018 Dell laptop and Chillblast PC both had W10 Pro and Microsoft offered a free update to 11. I readily accepted and both have been fine. If you’re lucky you may be offered it too. There isn’t a huge difference, mainly cosmetic.

Treat each addon individually. I’ve not personally changed locations but it should be straightforward enough. Just do the one and check if it worked. After that it’s just a case of time and effort. I’d avoid any ORBX ones though. Uninstall and reinstall might be best for those.

I said in my OP that I'd been away from flight sim for a long time.

I wrote that I had P3Dv5 on a HDD. I checked and found it was on a  partition on a rather decent 4TB SSD. 🙄  First pic.

Looking back, I bought this thinking that I might install 'the other sim' on a second partition, but I never did. At 75+ things get in the way sometimes.

So, I want to extend the G: partition to include the entire 4TB, or as near as is possible.

I attempted to do this using the W10 disk management utility. The second pic shows that the option to expand into M: was not available.

 

 

I'm not sure where to go from here.

As for the C drive, I have managed to clean out some large files and will do more with the Add-ons, one by one via usb drive.

The good news is that my oldish PC is now W11 ready - I had to enable the TPM thing.

 

@betelgeuse, eekkk! This looks a real nightmare. Can you confirm how many physical drives (HDD or SSD) you have in this PC?

Ideally it should be no greater than one but clearly you have far more. It looks like 6 logical drives - C, D, E, H, K and M.

Name each physical drive, its size and the drive letters assigned to each.

The days when we divided a physical drive into one or more logical partition are long gone. Stick to one drive - C and life will be far simpler.

You can use AOMEI Partition Assistant (free) to merge partitions but any data on them will be lost so backup everything first.

1 hour ago, betelgeuse said:

I attempted to do this using the W10 disk management utility. The second pic shows that the option to expand into M: was not available

The reason why it is not available is that you can only expand into UNALLOCATED drive space. NOT an existing disk partition.

Clean as much as you can off BOTH your partitions (always a good habit to do now and  then) and AOEMI can move and extend each if you do want to keep separate partitions.

When you have done this you can SHRINK the partitions. This will create UNALLOCATED space on left or right of the drive. Then you MOVE the partitions apart and extend them INWARD. Or just one. I don't know if you can MOVE with the free version for sure but I think so.

Ray is right about separate partitions these days EXCEPT I would always keep windows and apps on their OWN C partition then if you have only the one dive have another large D partition for everything else.

Better is 2 drives. The 2nd drive being one big partition with all your fun stuff and DATA on, windows and apps kept separate on C drive.

 

For what it’s worth I have two 2 TB external SSDs I use for all photo real scenery and to store installers and other things. The sceneries load and run great and I even ran ran FSX/Steam installed on an external. Cheap and easy storage. Just plug in. Might consider that as an option.

"The days when we divided a physical drive into one or more logical partition are long gone"

I still divide mine, for the simple reason that it makes backups quicker and easier to restore if necessary.

On 9/4/2024 at 8:31 PM, Ray Proudfoot said:

My older 2018 Dell laptop and Chillblast PC both had W10 Pro and Microsoft offered a free update to 11. I readily accepted and both have been fine. If you’re lucky you may be offered it too. There isn’t a huge difference, mainly cosmetic.

My machine is now W11 ready.

In their usual kindly way, MS force the issue by stopping support for W10 in just over a year's time.

Edited September 6, 20241 yr by betelgeuse

8 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

Better is 2 drives. The 2nd drive being one big partition with all your fun stuff and DATA on, windows and apps kept separate on C drive.

That was how my 2018 purchased PC was setup. I was going to do the same with the one I bought last year but a very knowledgeable Rob Ainscough advised to keep to one.

Why? Because my motherboard has one PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot ready for the fastest drives on the market. Adding a second SSD would mean attaching it to a slower socket. Not light years slower but slower. I bought a single 4Tb M.2 Crucial and it really is fast.