Wrongway Posted March 23, 2015 Share Posted March 23, 2015 Hi, I'm new to Orbx and FTX products. I'm tempted to go O.T. and gush about how accurate the Desolation Wilderness area is in the new Tahoe KTVL airport (I'm literally stunned and very excited), but now I have a problem that requries reinstalling everything from FSX on up. (I tried to eat forbidden fruit. For Adam and Eve it was apples. For me, it was trying to make DX10 work... One fix led to another, and now I've been kicked out of paradise, which I have to re-install.) My system has changed since initlal install. I intend to install FSX and Orbx to a drive other than C:. It would be very helpful to know: 1) how much free space is needed on the destination drive for FTX NA (in this case, the L: drive)? 2) how much free space is needed on the C: drive to unpack the installer and then install to L:? When I first got the FTX NA and KTVL programs, it took about a week of trying to contact FlightSim Store support before I could get the unpacker to work, and the only hint I got was maybe I needed 100 gigs or so of free space, no hint as to whether this was on the boot drive or the destination drive or a combination of both. (That plus a lot of trial and error finally got it unpacked and installed, there is some minor frustration in this.) 100 gigs of free space is impractical for me to keep free on the C: drive all the time. I will have to use a partition manager to move all my data around again to create extra space on the C: drive, and it would be very helpful if I could minimize my risks by knowing exactly what free space I need and where. I'll add that my information needs can't be completely abnormal, since common perception is that FSX wants to be on it's own dedicated drive. It would be helpful if this information was on a readme.txt file that's viewable before one attempts to install your products. Looking forward to your reply, getting these amazing products re-installed, and using them in the reasonably glorious DX9 they were meant to be viewed in... (Ouch, but that's my problem, isn't it?) Gary Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stewart Hobson Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 Hello, and welcome to the forums. Installing FSX on its own drive is not a bad idea; keep C: for only your OS and maybe Internet stuff. And then all your Orbx stuff will also be installed onto the same drive, in your case L:, by default--the Orbx installers will find where you have FSX installed. The real question to ask is how large a drive to install FSX and Orbx? Some here will tell you 1 TB, anticipating that you will install a large number of Orbx products. That will depend on you, of course. I have FSX and Orbx installed on a 500 Gb SSD, and because I'm not even close to installing all the possible Orbx products, I haven't filled up even 50% of the drive. Once you have everything installed to your satisfaction, I would advise revisiting DX10 and purchasing Steve's DX10 fixer for help in getting things squared away with DX10. An up-to-date Nvidia gpu is also advisable (GTX 7xx or higher). I didn't find the AMD card I formerly used up to the task. Good luck! Stew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrongway Posted March 24, 2015 Author Share Posted March 24, 2015 Stewart, thanks for the welcome and the answer. I appreciate the opinion on overall drive size and graphics card. My card is at least an nVidia, but it is a little dated (GTX 285 - don't laugh too hard, it still beats a 650). Just don't have the money for a 770 or above yet. But I am thinking about it. What I was really wondering is, how much space is used on the C: drive while the install is happening - even when the installed files themselves are going onto a different drive? I got out-of-drivespace messages during the install, which turned out to mean I didn't have enough space to unpack FTX NCA onto the C: drive (which is evidently what the installer automatically does) while installing FTX NCA itself onto the L: drive. As I said above, the only estimate I got before was maybe 100 gigs, but that seems bigger than necessary (NCA is what - 30 or 40 gigs completely installed into FSX?), so I wonder if the real answer isn't smaller? Knowing this ahead of time would help tremendously in planning the re-install. As I said, I have to use a partition manager to add space to C:, which means time and some risk to files being shuttled around, so there really is a matter of deliberateness and planning in re-installing this product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stewart Hobson Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 Yes, I see what your question is now. The quick answer is: I don't know how much space on C: drive is used for the unpacking. I do know that I haven't had the problem you're referring to. On my flight sim rig, my C: drive is only 120 Gb, and I've never had a problem downloading and installing the Orbx sceneries, no matter how large--Global Base is quite large, in fact. How much space on your C: drive at present? I'm not sure if partitioning the thing is that necessary these days. 500 Gb HDDs are very reasonably priced, for instance, not that I would recommend a 500 Gb HDD for your C: drive, just that investing in a reasonably sized C: seems to be the best course of action, and that would preclude your having to partition the thing merely in order to download and install sceneries for your flight sim. I recently built a new rig exclusively for flight simming, and with the aforementioned 120 Gb C: drive managed to install all my Orbx sceneries without a problem. And I tend to agree with you: 100 gigs for an install of NCA seems a bit much. I know that could not have been the case when I did all my re-installing a few months ago. Stew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrongway Posted March 25, 2015 Author Share Posted March 25, 2015 Stew, thanks for your replies. I'm somewhat of an oldschooler when it comes to computers, and my hard drive organization reflects that. My main drive is a 500 Gb drive, and it's partitioned to help organize the huge number of things I ask the computer to do. One partition for the Win 7 boot drive and one for the XP boot drive (dual boot setup due to lots of legacy gear - esp. film scanners best supported under XP). One partition for photos and photo processing (medium format photography - huge photo files), one for daily and biz apps, one for non-FSX flight sims, one for other games, one for archived downloads and updates, one for FSX. With so much on the computer, I find it necessary to partition just to be able to find stuff I need to work on. Currently I'm using a second 500 Gb for FSX, though I am probably going to replace it with an SSD. The original set up was with 35 GB for the Win 7 C:, leaving nearly 4 Gb free. That's the setup that produced continual unpacking errors due to lack of free space. I've since used a partition manager to add another 10 Gb to C:. I don't like moving stuff around with a partition manager more than necessary since there is a low risk of disaster. But I do it when I really need to. What I really want to do is to: 1) figure out a permanent, stable configuration for C: partition, including enough free space to unpack Orbx products without moving stuff around first using the partition manager. 2) figure out how big an SSD I really need for a dedicated FSX installation, esp. if I wind up with PNW, maybe Alaska, certainly the Redding airport for NCA, along with my current NCA and Tahoe. I currently have a 120 Gb SSD sitting in a box, but am tempted to return it (got another week or so to decide) if it's really too small. I originally assumed 120 Gb would be more than plenty, but maybe not so? Thus my request for into on C: drive use in unpacking, and accurate footprints for the FTX products installed. I do know my partition use is somewhat archaic, but I'm likely to stick with it, since it works for me. Stew, thanks again for your input. Anyone else got any ideas about the numbers I'm looking for? There must be someone - user, developer, marketer, etc. - who has good numbers to share with me? I can't be the only one looking for this info... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dominique Posted March 25, 2015 Share Posted March 25, 2015 TVL is about 1 Gb and NCA is 5.5 Gb on my rig (P3D figures). The rule of thumb to decompress that I am aware of is that you need twice the disk memory than the scenery you install. My FSX install (including a world mesh, look at my sig) was (it's just gone off the disk) less than half a 500 GB SSD. Hope that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrongway Posted March 25, 2015 Author Share Posted March 25, 2015 Ah, the answer is narrowing down! Thanks for your info, Dominique! Very helpful. Anyone else have insight into these questions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrongway Posted March 26, 2015 Author Share Posted March 26, 2015 Last night, I successfully unwrapped and installed FTX NCA onto L: with only 9.7 Gigs free on C:, so it would seem the minimum free space required on C: is 9.7 Gigs or less. Thanks again, Stew and Dominique for helping me find my answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stewart Hobson Posted March 26, 2015 Share Posted March 26, 2015 Glad to see things worked out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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