Another Question.

[Dadtom65]

At the moment I have my MSFS on a 2TB Ssd and as you can imagine it’s filling up fast. Been looking at 4tb Ssd but your looking at about £400 or there about. Is there anyway I could use another 2tb Ssd some how. Probably not but if you don’t ask you will not find out. Thanks Derek.

[John Dow]

I use an 8TB normal HDD for my MSFS Community folder and it seems to run perfectly well.  MSFS itself is on an SSD.

[Dadtom65]

Hi John thanks for the reply. So I just copy the Community folder to a bigger drive and leave the rest on my Ssd. Probably knowing me I would much it up . Might get back to you and ask what folders do I have to leave on the Ssd. Thanks for your help Derek.

[renault]

6 hours ago, Dadtom65 said:

Hi John thanks for the reply. So I just copy the Community folder to a bigger drive and leave the rest on my Ssd. Probably knowing me I would much it up . Might get back to you and ask what folders do I have to leave on the Ssd. Thanks for your help Derek.

 

Hi Derek

 

I have the exact same arrangement as John @John Dow. I have never noticed any degradation in performance with this arrangement 

 

All my Orbx scenery addons along with my freeware ones are on my HDD. My MS2020 is on an SSD and also on the SSD I keep my aircraft addons, custom liveries etc. 

 

I use the freeware Addons Linker tool ( MSFS Addons Linker » Microsoft Flight Simulator  to manage it all.

It makes it extremely easy to keep it all in good shape . The Addons Linker works the same way that Orbx Central does,  in that it creates symbolic links from your 

folders where you keep your custom content  and links it to the Community folder. 

 

One very nice feature is that you can create custom presets, so for example you could have specific geographical areas in the preset.  So you could just load up , say North America preset and then when you were finished, if you wanted to fly , say in the UK , you would just exit the sim, run Addons Linker  and you would then have just  your UK content in your community folder.

 

As you start to accumulate more scenery, planes, livery etc it becomes an extremely efficient way to manage everything. So you can keep your addons in a very logical named order elsewhere on your machine and the Addons linker will take care of linking it to the MS2020 community folder for you.

 

It is really the number one addon for MS2020 that I simply can't do without.

 

Hope this helps

Cheers

Pete

[Dadtom65]

Thank you Pete for your help in trying to help me. I was okay when John just said to move the Community folder to another drive but a symbolic link now. Think I have heard of them somewhere but it all seems to be getting to complicated for me. Must read up on it somewhere. Thanks Derek.

[renault]

Hi Derek

 

I'm not sure that John actually said that  you do a straight copy or move as I think you may have assumed in your reply that is

what he meant possibly. I didn't see a reply from him here though.

 

In essence though, MS2020 will allow you to keep the contents  of your Community Folder somewhere else on your machine

where you have more  storage space. 

 

You just have to supply a  "pointer" in your community folder to allow MS2020 to know where this information is stored. 

In computer speak , this pointer is called a symbolic link.

 

If all you want to do is keep your Orbx scenery somewhere else on a bigger drive, you can use Orbx central to do that

 

It is in the Orbx Central manual, under the section "Moving a Library to a new location."

 

Here are the steps from the manual

 

Moving a library to another location
Moving a library is painless with Central and can be achieved in a few steps only:

 

1  Go to Settings > Libraries.
2 Note the directory of the library you’d like to move.
3 Remove the library that you would like to move (remember: this doesn’t delete the actual files).
4 Close Central by right-clicking on the tray and selecting “quit”.
5  Create a new and empty directory in the new location
6 Start Central again
7 Open Settings, and then the Libraries page
8 Press ‘Create New Library’
9 Select the new library location, give it a name and then press ‘Save’.
10 Move the files from your original library into the new location. DO NOT amend the file structure. This step may

take a while depending on your disk speed.

 

Central will automatically scan the library for installed products, and then configure your simulators appropriately. 

 

I'm sorry if my original reply confused you, as I wasn't completely clear if you had information in your community folder

beyond just Orbx Scenery.  My answer tried to cover that topic as well.

 

Only data that you would normally  put into the Community folder such as Scenery etc. can be placed elsewhere on

a different drive for example.

 

Everything else that is in your MS2020 install location must be kept together in the current location.

 

However, since Orbx scenery data , especially if you have a lot of it , can become quite large in size ,the option in Orbx central

to place the scenery data elsewhere where you have more room is a very good and flexible option.

 

I mentioned the Addon Linker program to you , only because it allows you to keep other types of data  that you would also install

into your community folder, such as liveries for aircraft, or aircraft mods etc on another drive. 

 

It uses the same computer instructions that Orbx Central does , by placing  its own pointer (symbolic link)  in the Community folder

 to tell MS2020 where to locate this information.  

 

Hope this helps and again , apologies if my original answer confused you

All the best 

Pete

Edited July 24, 2021 by renault