Backup your addonlinker community files to external drive.

If you are using AddonLinker, then your folder where you store your community stuff is not just one big folder called Community. It is a nested folder in which you organized subfolders to store and to add scenery, dependencies, utilities, planes, etc. Scenery might be divided into nations, and planes into plane types, and so forth.

Every few days or weeks you add new scenery etc. somewhere in that structure. So how to do a backup of only the new folders of addons, instead of the whole structure which you have already backed up.

Notes: an external SSD is WAY faster than sending 500GB of data in and out of for instance the internet for storage. 20 minutes instead of say 25 hours. (I use a common run of the mill Crucial X9 Pro 2TB Portable SSD USB 3.2 External Solid State Drive - CT2000X9PROSSD902). If I made a typo or am unclear, then check Google AI and ask it any questions you have.

First step is to copy and paste (NOT cut and paste) the whole AddonLInker community file structure from your computer drive to the external drive. (It takes about 20 minutes for my 500GB of AddonLinker Community files). I store my AoL files in this folder c:/addons community and the backed up files in x:\addons community

Second step, is every 2 or 3 weeks I want to redo the backup, but only the new changes to the external drive are going to be to add the new scenery, etc. from flightsim.to or purchases. In other words, only the new folders and files.

The method is to just make a batchfile to do that.

But there is a problem in that Windows often changes the drive letters of your drives. So first you need to lock in a drive letter for your external SSD drive. Make it a letter towards the end of the alphabet, lets say X.

1. Plug your External SSD into your computer.

2. Right-click the Windows Start Button and select Disk Management.

3. Locate your Crucial SSD in the list at the bottom (in my case the one labeled roughly 1860 GB or 2 TB).

4. Right-click the drive's large healthy partition block and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths...

5. Click Change... and select a high letter from the dropdown menu, such as X, and click OK.

and now the external drive will always be drive X in Windows.

And now, the batchfile to save only the new folders in the backup is a .bat file. which you make like this:

1. Copy the code: Highlight and copy the text below (it starts with @echo off).

2. Open Notepad:

3. Paste: Paste the copied code into the blank Notepad window.

4. Save As: Click File in the top left, then select Save As...

5. Name the file: Set the file name to Sync_MSFS_Addons.bat (it must end in .bat).

6. Change the Type: In the dropdown menu directly below the file name labeled "Save as type," change it from Text Documents (.txt)* to All Files (.).

7. Save: Save it straight to your Desktop or somewhere else you like it to be.

8. When you run the .bat file a cmd window opens, black command window will pop up. It will instantly scan through your huge AoL structure, and completely skip everything you already backed up, and flash the names of just the brand-new folders as it copies them over in a few seconds.

@echo off
title MSFS 2024 Addons Incremental Backup
echo Checking for External SSD (X:)...

:: Verify the X: drive is connected before starting
if not exist "X:\" (
echo [ERROR] External SSD is not detected on drive X:
echo Please make sure it is plugged in and assigned to letter X.
pause
exit
)

echo [SUCCESS] External SSD detected. Starting incremental backup...
echo Processing new files and folders only...
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------

robocopy "C:\ADDONS COMMUNITY" "X:\ADDONS COMMUNITY" /E /XO /R:1 /W:1 /MT:8

echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
echo [COMPLETE] Your backup is up to date!
pause

(notes from Fielder) Robocopy is part of Windows 10 and 11 (these supplementary backups only take a few quick seconds when you run the above .bat file).

1. /E: Copies all subfolders, even if they are deep inside the UK scenery structure.

2. /XO: Excludes Older files. This is the secret. It tells Windows: "If the backup folder already has this file, skip it completely."

3. /R:1 /W:1: If a flight sim file is currently locked or in use, it retries once and moves on, so your backup never freezes.

4. /MT:8: Enables multi-threaded copying. It copies 8 files at the exact same time, which makes small MSFS scenery files transfer drastically faster.