Jump to content

FSX on an external hard drive......


Recommended Posts

Hi everyone,

 

My old Windows XP machine was chugging along with its 150 GB hard drive and I noticed only the other day that it was getting near to full with all my home made scenery.

 

So I decided to simple copy and paste the FSX across to my external USB Verbatim hard drive. Then I opened this up and found the fsx.exe folder and put a link on the desk top.

 

OK I now have a new FSX icon on the desk top so holding my breath I pressed the icon and FSX sprung into action.

 

I tested it out and noticed that the flights load faster and flying the stock Cessna 172 is very smooth at 20 FPS and the quality is spot on.

 

So far so good, now to remove the FSX on the C drive to free up more space. So you have to go to the C drive and look for Microsoft Games. This is the ONLY folder you should right click on and delete. In Windows XP the files are so large that the rubbish bin cannot handle them so XP asks is it OK to permanently delete all. 

 

At this point I took a deep breath and hit delete ALL.

 

OK back to the desk top and delete the old short cut and then open FSX with the new icon pointing to the external drive.

 

Yes it works perfectly OK.

 

I now have a virtually empty C drive and Windows XP running a lot faster.

 

Hope this helps others.

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

whilst back in the uk recently i was astonished to find a new (for me ) chain of shops called the information exchange so had a nose around and could not believe how cheap you can buy secondhand phones and computers for, some of the p.c's were really high spec as well! one thing that caught my eye was a sandisk 128 gb usb memory chip for 25 pounds  ! so i had to have that.

it was only a few years ago when my p.c's had hard drives of 6gb now I have 128gb on a key chain!!

Link to post
Share on other sites

whilst back in the uk recently i was astonished to find a new (for me ) chain of shops called the information exchange so had a nose around and could not believe how cheap you can buy secondhand phones and computers for, some of the pupdating edreally high spec as well! one thing that caught my eye was a sandisk 128 gb usb memory chip for 25 pounds ! so i had to have that.

it was only a few years ago when my p.c's had hard drives of 6gb now I have 128gb on a key chain!!

Isn't it just!! I reckon I have more processing power in my smartphone than in my first 4 pcs combined. We live in very exciting times.. technology is moving on so quickly that if you blink you'll miss it! This is the main reason i built my latest pc from individual parts.. if my mobo or chip need updating then it's a simple swap out.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi everyone,

My old Windows XP machine was chugging along with its 150 GB hard drive and I noticed only the other day that it was getting near to full with all my home made scenery.

So I decided to simple copy and paste the FSX across to my external USB Verbatim hard drive. Then I opened this up and found the fsx.exe folder and put a link on the desk top.

OK I now have a new FSX icon on the desk top so holding my breath I pressed the icon and FSX sprung into action.

I tested it out and noticed that the flights load faster and flying the stock Cessna 172 is very smooth at 20 FPS and the quality is spot on.

So far so good, now to remove the FSX on the C drive to free up more space. So you have to go to the C drive and look for Microsoft Games. This is the ONLY folder you should right click on and delete. In Windows XP the files are so large that the rubbish bin cannot handle them so XP asks is it OK to permanently delete all.

At this point I took a deep breath and hit delete ALL.

OK back to the desk top and delete the old short cut and then open FSX with the new icon pointing to the external drive.

Yes it works perfectly OK.

I now have a virtually empty C drive and Windows XP running a lot faster.

Hope this helps others.

Great to hear that it's worked for you. Must have been a bit nerve wracking with your finger hovering over the delete key. As far as I know FSX will work fine with things like scenery and aircraft on a totally different drive as long as you 'move' it which will preserve all the links. I do that for some of my aircraft as it frees up snd space and loading is faster. One thing I'm not certain about is what would happen if you had to do a system restore. Might be worth doing a full Image backup of all the mapped drives as you have them in case anything goes pear shaped.. belt and braces :D

Link to post
Share on other sites

Er.... Following up on what Steph said, and not wishing to rain on anyone's parade, or anything..... Nevertheless I'm concerned for you — although fsx may be working for the moment, all sorts of registry links must be pointing to non-existent fsx directories on the C: drive. If you're lucky, you might not notice anything awry until you do an upgrade and discover that the installer can't find the original installation, or something along those lines.

 

AFAIK the only *safe* way to move all or part of fsx elsewhere is to use something which Microsoft calls a "junction" (and most Operating Systems call a symbolic link). For example, here's how I moved my Orbx directory from being C:\fsx\Orbx to S:\!LinkedFSXfiles\Orbx. (Obviously, you will have to substitute your own paths for mine, if you try this technique. Incidentally, in my installation S: and C: are both SSDs, but that makes no difference to the commands you type).

 

N.B. What follows applies to Windows 7, but there's an XP direct equivalent that I'll explain soon.

 

First, I cut and pasted the Orbx directory into S:\!LinkedFSXfiles, so it was moved from my C: drive (C:\fsx\Orbx) to S:\!LinkedFSXfiles\Orbx.

 

Then I opened an elevated command prompt — in the following lines the directory preceding the ">" (the prompt) is the directory I'm in, so when I opened the command box I started off in C:\Windows\system32, and then changed to C:\fsx which was previously the parent directory of Orbx. There is no longer an Orbx directory in C:\fsx, but the mklink command will cause the O/S to think that there is, whilst redirecting all requests to the new location. The commands I typed are in bold

 

C:\Windows\system32>cd \fsx

C:\fsx>mklink /j "Orbx" "S:\!LinkedFSXfiles\Orbx"

Junction created for Orbx <<===>> S:\!LinkedFSXfiles\Orbx

 

I then closed the command box, and everything was almost fine. That is, it became fine when Orbx finally fixed their installer to take account of people who have moved the directory in this way.   ;)

 

I appreciate that that was a very quick description -- I found a longer one for you here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/   If you scroll down almost to the end, that article also explains how you go about doing this in Windows XP by using the Junction tool, downloadable from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx

 

The only difference from the Windows 7 technique seems to be that instead of using mklink /j you need to use junction -s instead (since XP doesn't include the mklink command).

 

Returning to your particular case, since you have already moved your fsx directory, you've hopefully already done step one (the move), but to retrofit the "junction" you have to be sure that you're sitting in the directory above wherever fsx used to be when you type the mklink command to fsx's new home.

 

For example, (this is just one possibility) it might be that you need to change directory (the cd command, in a DOS box command window) to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games" and then type something like mklink /j [or for XP junction -s] "Microsoft Flight Simulator X" "E:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X" (it all depends on where your fsx directory was, and where you've moved it to).

 

Everything will now work properly in all respects, since although the registry entries are obviously still pointing to your C: drive, under the hood the link will automatically redirect all those references to fsx's new home.

 

Do please be careful if you try this, though: it will definitely bite if you get it wrong! As with all powerful techniques, it has to be used with care.    :)

 

Best of luck,

 

Bruce

 

a.k.a. brian747, not to mention brian737, brian777.....

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

I wondered about that, John, but since he says his performance has improved since he moved to an external HD I could only think of two possibilities. Either (a) he has USB 3 and his C: drive was fragmented to Alpha Centauri and back and paging heavily, or (b) he has USB 2 and his C: drive is unbelievably bad.    :P    Mind you, if his computer also dates from the time of Windoze XP.....    <gulp>

 

But then I'm probably wrong —

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence."

(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, in A Study in Scarlet).

 

Cheers,

 

B.

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Must admit I was a tad concerned too yesterday but was out and about so couldn't respond in full.

Would actually be a better idea to keep fsx exactly where it was and then 'move' scenery and/or aircraft onto the second drive. I know that will definitely work.. i use it quite a bit on win7

FSX has lots of links and pathways to all sorts of areas (some hidden) so system restore won't work as it won't move folders and files back where they were reliably enough..

I'm concerned that once it's moved it will never go back to the way it was and a full restore from pre - fsx is possibly the only option.. not 100% certain though..

An image copy would preserve what is there now but if there is ever a problem with the second drive I'm not convinced even an image restore would work..

Link to post
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...