ACTIVE Adding more ORBX scenery by linking drives?

[johnost]

I currently have FSX and all its add-ons on a dedicated SSD, but it is 80% full, and the general advice is not to load SSDs to more than 75% of capacity. Since I want to purchase and install Open LC NA, I am wondering if I can install additional ORBX sceneries to my hard drive, since I don't want to rework my existing computer at this time (I know there will be a penalty with increased loading times). The system presently runs very well.

 

Current configuration is FSX with FTX Global Base, FTX Global Vector, and FTX Open LC Europe installed on SSD D:\Flight Simulator X\ORBX. W7 64 bit and all other programs are installed on the hard C: drive, which has lots of room. I plan to install additional ORBX sceneries on the C: drive and link them to the ORBX folder on the D: drive.

 

1) If I create folders C:\Flight Simulator X\ORBX, can I install FTX Open LC NA there?

 

2) If so, can I create a link from D:\Flight Simulator X\ORBX to C:\Flight Simulator X\ORBX that would work?

 

I have instructions on how to create the link, but I would like some assurance that this would work. Opinions and advice would be most welcome.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

 

The answer to your first question is no, that won't work.

 

You should indeed create a new folder on your C drive and call it Orbx.

Then copy the entire content of your D:\Flight Simulator X\ORBX folder

into it.

 

Then rename D:\Flight Simulator X\ORBX to D:\Flight Simulator X\ORBXold.

 

Create your link from C:\Flight Simulator X\ORBX to D:\Flight Simulator X

 

You should now once again have an Orbx folder in your simulator, but only

the link is on your D drive, the files are on C.

 

Now when you run an installer, you still point it to D:\Flight Simulator X but the

files are installed to C:\Flight Simulator X\ORBX via the link.

 

Finally delete D:\Flight Simulator X\ORBXold to regain your disk free space.

[johnost]

Thanks a lot Nick for your detailed answer. Yes - I was afraid of something like that, i.e. having to run all the ORBX files from the hard drive, so now I wonder how bad the loading times will be, as I presently load from the SSD in about 20 seconds. I will probably give it a try. While the obvious solution would be to change to a bigger SSD, I am thinking of upgrading to a state of the art computer next year.

[Ben McClintock]

I'm thinking of adding a feature into FTX Central v2 that will allow you to serve some of your Orbx addons from another drive. For example, if you want to store all your airports on a secondary HDD you can do that whilst leaving the regions in your simulator directory.

[Jon Clarke]

Ben, that would be terrific and a tremendous help to us, or me definitely. My current ORBX folder is well over 140GB and if I could move the FTX airports to another drive it would certainly negate the the need for another SSD upgrade and all the reinstalling effort etc. The addon airports are becoming very high volume now due to the excellent details and coverage being offered by ORBX and thus occupy more GB on drives. If this could be split on drives it would be great.

[johnost]

I'm thinking of adding a feature into FTX Central v2 that will allow you to serve some of your Orbx addons from another drive. For example, if you want to store all your airports on a secondary HDD you can do that whilst leaving the regions in your simulator directory.

 

That would be greatly appreciated, would it also work with major scenery packages like an Open LC package?