A new hard drive and advice on installing fsx

[stretch1365 40]

Hi all,

 

My PC has been running fsx deluxe version very well for the last five years, it's stable and never plays up, it's great. However my 500Gb hard drive is filling up with all of the various addon's we all collect over time, I am actually surprised it has lasted this long. Everything has been installed directly on the "C"  drive and all the usual tweaks to the cfg files done, HIGHMEMFIX, TEXTURE MAX etc.

 

So I have decided to get a new 1Gb hard drive installed to run along side the old one, the new one just being for fsx, and at the same time I have bought fsx acceleration, and will start off with a new fresh install, but I have a few queries first, which I will list below.

 

* Do I need to uninstall my old fsx deluxe from the old hard drive completely first before starting the new install with fsx acceleration? Even though it is on a different drive.

 

* Do I also need to uninstall all add on aircraft and scenery as well? If so, I assume I need to install all addon's from the ZIP files I originally downloaded at the time of purchase. I figure it isn't possible to just click and drag files to their new home! Does this apply to scenery files, as you can in effect be kept anywhere on your hard drive, so possibly they don't follow the same rules as aircraft files and could be dragged to a new home without causing issues. I am not 100% sure!

 

* Are there any other trip ups I might encounter while I install everything on my new drive. I have UTX, GEX, Active Sky and REX textures also FSUIPC which could have things saved elsewhere on the old drive and cause issues with the new one if files are not in the correct places.

 

* Can anyone suggest any further reading on any of the above before I start?

 

Well that is all I can think of for now, I appreciate any comments from anyone out there, but please not things like "Switch to P3D" or "Xplane is better" I am quite happy with fsx and have too many addons to justify binning them to have the latest flight sim on my PC. So I will stay with fsx thanks.

[charliearon 3,023]

I'd get something bigger that a 1GB HDD.  I bet you meant 1 TB HDD.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Here is what I would do:

 

1. Install Acceleration (you may have to uninstall SP2 first).  Verify that it works.

    this is assuming you really want to have Acceleration..

 

2. Copy the entire FSX folder to the new harddrive, lets call it G:

 

3. Start up FSX from the G: drive.. just double click the fsx.exe in the new location

    Verify that it works.

 

4. Make a new shortcut to the new FSX.exe location etc

 

5. Run the Flight1 registry fix app and direct it to the new location

 

http://www.flight1software.com/files/FS_Registry_Repair.exe

 

Once you are totally happy with the new FSX on the G: drive, you can erase the FSX folder on the C: drive

[stretch1365 40]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for the replies.

 

charliearon, yes your quite right I did indeed mean a 1Tb hard drive, lol, I can't believe I typed 1Gb looking back.

 

Bert I didn't realise it would indeed be that easy to move fsx from one drive to another. So it sounds like I don't have to reinstall everything from scratch, great news!

[forshaw 47]

You may want to use one of those software that's designed specifically for file copy. I am not sure that the one provided with MS Win 7 or 8 will pick up every single aspect of all of the files. Some vendors do provide that software with the hard drive purchase.

 

In terms of hard drive if you have the cash you may want to invest in a SSD for your FSX. I just did and it made a big difference in the overall performance. Of course it does not increase your FPS but initial load time, texture load and other things are faster which adds to the overall experience.

 

Just wanted to mention it.

 

Best Regards

[DaveH 14]

Or, instead of uninstalling the old FSX folder on C:/ drive, remove fsx.exe from that folder and keep the rest as backup for FSX on new drive.

 

And, it is really great having a large hard drive for ONLY FSX.  Mine runs very well (super fast, no stutters or crashes) with only FSX on a 1 TB drive (oh, yes, it looks really funny when you show the percentage used on the large drive, but they are not much more expensive than a smaller drive, and access times must be very fast.)