Running out of SSD space for Addons, but have totally empty 1Tb HDD.

I have a 500gb SSD installed in my new system, and unfortunately I do use a lot of photoreal scenery. On top of that I have some of the Orbx sceneries, lots of payware airports, quite a few payware aircraft, you guessed it, lots of gygabites of FSX and P3D addons.

As I said, the way my system is configured, I have a 500gb SSD and a 1TB HD. As of this morning, there is 144GB of space left in the SSD, but the 1TB hard drive sits there absolutely empty.

Would moving some of my addons, mainly photoreal, to the hard drive work even though fsx and p3d are installed in the SSD?

If not, is there any other way to make this work? At this point I barely have 1/5 of my sceneries installed, and it looks that I will be running out of space soon.

Thanks for any ideas or comments,

Bernardo.

Hi Bernardo,

I'll give you my thoughts on this. As this is a forum and may be read by people with varying levels of familiarity with FSX, don't be offended if I say something very basic.

Prior to the use of SSDs only HDs were used. The only improvement I've noted and others have posted is that the time it takes to load FSX is much faster with SSDs. The key word here is "load". Programs do not run from drives but from RAM. Getting the needed data into RAM is the prime consideration.

Scenery can be installed anywhere. What could be a problem is using an external USB drive. Not only is the transfer time longer but it seems possible that it could "spin down" if not accessed fairly regularly. As I haven't tried to put any FSX data on an external drive anything I would say would only be conjecture.

If your only concern is with installing new scenery it seems simple enough to point the installation to your HD. As far as aircraft, moving the entire SimObjects folder to the HD and creating a symbolic link to it seems the easiest path to take. All of your current SimObjects would be off the SSD and any future additions would automatically be installed to the HD. If your not familiar with creating symbolic links I could post a simple procedure.

Jim F.

Jim,

I have the same problem and would love to know how to create that link!!

Thanks,

Gary

I have done this for some of my larger scenery files and it works fine. Just set up the folder structure you want on the HD and copy the scenery into the sub-folder you want to use. You then have to use the FSX or P3D Scenery Library Tool (World>Scenery Library) to edit the Directory setting for the scenery you want to move. Test it before you delete the original. Good Luck.

Charlie

I run a SSD that is only for the OS, I have FSX on a HHD. There is simply no benefit to having FSX on a SSD other than load time. I would advise against putting some add-ons on a different drive to that of FSX as this is just using system resources that would be better served running FSX.

My advice is move everything to your separate HHD, its cleaner, its easier to keep a track of everything when its all in one place, and should you have any problems easier to fix.

Regarding moving folders and creating Symbolic Links:

I use a freeware program called Mempad to save info that I think may be of future value. Here's the entry I have for Symbolic link use:

Symbolic links for Windows 7 (64bit anyway)

Re-locating files and having Windows treat them as if they were in the original location.

You simply MOVE the folder to the new location and then create a link to the new location in the original location.

Here's an example of moving the "SimObjects" folder from an SSD and to a HD:

1) MOVE the entire "SimObjects" folder to (the new location) - e.g. "Z:\"

2) With the mouse cursor in the main FSX folder, press shift and right click. From the menu that opens select "Open Command window here".

3) In the CMD window ENTER "mklink /J SimObjects Z:\SimObjects" to create the link. (use the complete path name to the new folder here)

4) That's all there is to it.

The only way you can tell the SimObjects folder is now a link is by a little arrow attached to the folder icon. Everything works as if the folder was in the original location.

Jim F.

There is a small app, "Symlink Creator", which you may find useful.

Chris.

If your only concern is with installing new scenery it seems simple enough to point the installation to your HD. As far as aircraft, moving the entire SimObjects folder to the HD and creating a symbolic link to it seems the easiest path to take. All of your current SimObjects would be off the SSD and any future additions would automatically be installed to the HD. If your not familiar with creating symbolic links I could post a simple procedure.

Jim F.

Thanks Jim, I am not concerned with Simobjects, that can stay in the SSD, your detailed explanation is valuable info, just need to make sure I understand what and how to do it.

I run a SSD that is only for the OS, I have FSX on a HHD. There is simply no benefit to having FSX on a SSD other than load time. I would advise against putting some add-ons on a different drive to that of FSX as this is just using system resources that would be better served running FSX.

My advice is move everything to your separate HHD, its cleaner, its easier to keep a track of everything when its all in one place, and should you have any problems easier to fix.

Darryl, this computer is really just for FSX and P3D, I don't play other games nor do I use it for work, for that I have a laptop. If I move everything to the HHD, I would have an empty SSD, plus, one of the things that drove me insane with my previous computer was the extraordinary amount of time it took to load FSX. It looks that I have two choices, move to HD or create a symbolic link.

I do have an extra leftover 23" monitor from my previous system, so I am thinking of going for the three monitor setup, but maybe I am jumping way too far ahead.

Not to hijack your thread, but do you have noticeable difference with your Solid State Drive? I've been debating ordering one....

It seems to load faster although I only have 1/5 of my addons installed so far.

Not to hijack your thread, but do you have noticeable difference with your Solid State Drive? I've been debating ordering one....

Hi John,

yes, massively. I have Windows and FSX plus airports, ORBX and airplanes installed on a 1 TB SSD (and nothing else - this installation is exclusively for FSX) and additional scenery (mesh, photo) on a second 1TB SSD on a different controller. No more hold-ups, smooth sailing. The "reduced loadtimes" are evident for every action the sim takes - just think about how much data it has to read from the disks, when all it has is 4 Gbyte of internal memory, but countless GByte of scenery where you can happen to fly over. Same goes for planes, the own or AI - not everything is kept in VAS all the time, a lot of stuff gets GC'd and has to be constantly reloaded (I'm pretty sure sound and AI textures are never in the memory for long). I even went a step further, and moved the most wanted folders to a RAMDisk (works, when you create Symlinks for them) - like Sound, Textures, Effects, the UT2 AI planes. Know these little stutters now an then, black textures, things flashing? All gone.

But this will only happen if the rest of your system is already well tuned and all that it misses out on is waiting for the HDD (e.g. blurries, black textures, stutters and the likes). If you have different bottlenecks elsewhere, the HDD/SSD switch won't matter too much.

I even went a step further, and moved the most wanted folders to a RAMDisk (works, when you create Symlinks for them) - like Sound, Textures, Effects, the UT2 AI planes. Know these little stutters now an then, black textures, things flashing? All gone.

 

But this will only happen if the rest of your system is already well tuned and all that it misses out on is waiting for the HDD (e.g. blurries, black textures, stutters and the likes). If you have different bottlenecks elsewhere, the HDD/SSD switch won't matter too much.

I started having blue squares and some stutters right after installing REX, which I have read is related to load times, which perplexes me given the upgrade in hardware compared to the old system where I was getting 7 fps, but no squares, blue or black.

At the risk of stating the obvious. You can buy 1TB SSDS for under $350 all day long on Newegg. If you can fill a TB with FSX stuff, you've got more scenery than anyone I know personally.

Considering what the rest of your rig surely cost, $350 shouldn't be a big deal!

The SSD is almost unnoticeable with a default FSX setup.

But load it down with addons and scenery - and in particular photoscenery, and the load time for the sim is sometimes enough to put you off loading the sim. THAT'S when the SSD comes into its own.

Personally, with HD's and SSD's getting every closer in price, I'd look at another SSD solely for FS use, with the HD as a pure backup holding your vanilla FSX install and key addons. It's stupid not to if you plan on keeping a bulked-up FSX installation.

I started having blue squares and some stutters right after installing REX, which I have read is related to load times, which perplexes me given the upgrade in hardware compared to the old system where I was getting 7 fps, but no squares, blue or black.

Unfortunately these things are extremely hard to diagnose. It is basically trial&error all the way. A bit like human medicine, where the doctor first aims at the most likely and well known causes, and only starts to dig deeper when Aspirin fails. There still is no way to shoot a 100% correct diagnosis right from the outset. OK, bad comparison.

One way to look at it could be the FPS. If you limit them to 7 on your new system, the blue squares might be gone (= moved the bottleneck to another place). I know, not helpful. Just an example how these things can be interconnected.

With SSDs one has to be extra careful. First, the SSD alignment has to be correct (google that one if unsure), second the SSD have their own built in controller and do a ton of stuff on the side (like trimming the memory etc). What you need to avoid at all cost is de-fragmenting the SSD, they don't like this at all and performance and lifespan will suffer. The built-in controller will see to that itself. Maybe a quick check of the SSDs performance will help (I'm using CrystalDiskMark portable for that) and watch out for the S.M.A.R.T. values of the drive. You never know if you ran into bad memory chips.

But it could also be, that your graphics driver settings aren't right, and the blue squares are not load time inflicted, but GPU hold-ups. Did you use the same resolution setting for the REX stuff?

Is your anti aliasing setting OK? Is affinity mask set correctly? And so on...

One of the reasons I split the data on multiple drives was to minimize the disk read processes fighting with each other for resources. This is especially bad on a classic harddrive, where the heads have to reposition physically to service the next read call. So I dropped in a second SATA controller on a PCIe slot and connected the second (first HDD then) SSD there. These controllers are cheap to get, and now the read processes can run in parallel if they want. The other reason was, that this way I can share compatible scenery between the three sims (FSX boxed, SE and P3D) which all reside on their own system drive (swappable drive bays). I highly recommend this approach, because you can keep your Windows system to the bare minimum required for the sim, and you don't have cross-compatibility issues or interference from other programs not related to simming.

If you use the HDD for scenery, I would not move all of it there. Only mesh and photoscenery for starters. These are the largest chunks of data, and if you are careful with fragmentation and the data is nicely aligned on the HDD, it can be read concurrently in one go. Should not be too much of a holdup. The airports and planes I would keep on the SSD instead. If you drop in a second controller like I did, you could further optimize this setup, and when time and money allows, you can switch the HDD for a SSD too.

Mr F,

When you are talking, in step 1, to "MOVE: the simobjects folder, can that be done with a simple copy/paste or is there a better way?

Hi svpst,

The object is to move the folder to the new location thereby freeing up space in the existing location. So Moving is preferable to copying and pasting. If your concern is something going wrong with the Move, the existing SimObjects folder could be renamed so as to eliminate confusion as to the which SimObjects folder is being used and then when all works well the renamed folder could be deleted.

Jim F.

Hi,

In post #6 of this thread I posted a procedure regarding moving a folder and then creating a symbolic link to it. I wanted to verify that the procedure still worked so I moved my Rotorcraft folder to a new location and created a link to it. Here's what things look like:

Jim F.

I understand that all that's needed is to change the paths SimObjectPaths in FSX.cfg

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?287612-removing-files-aircraft-from-base-install-of-FSX

Hi mgh,

I'm questioning "all that's needed". That seems to imply that it would be easier in some way. Have you tried it and, if so, in what way is it simpler?

Jim F.

I understand that all that's needed is to change the paths SimObjectPaths in FSX.cfg

 

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?287612-removing-files-aircraft-from-base-install-of-FSX

True that. But the additional symlink helps with installing things at a later time - most installers just assume that the default folders are where they have always been. Doing both is the way to go (setting the SimObjects path directly to reduce access times and the symlink for installers).

Hi,

As I'm unable to include an image in a private message directly, as an effort to provide help to a request I'm posting an image showing the content of the CMD window involving a link creation in the main Steam FSX window with the SimObjects folder moved to C:\ on a HD.

Jim F.

After some trial and error, and the research it spawned, I have successfully created a number of Junction links between two of my hard drives. I have discovered some requirements, at least for my Win7 Pro 64-bit system, that were not mentioned in this forum:

1. regardless of where my cursor is in File Explorer, I have to type the complete path of both the new folder and the target folder. This seemed unnecessary as the command line already showed the path to Flight Simulator and it took me a while to figure out the answer when I kept getting syntax error messages.

2. both the new folder path and target path must be in quotes. I only stumbled across this quite accidentally after a number of web searches about the syntax.

3. I am still confused by the fact that my new mklink folder reports the full size of the contents of the target folder. I am concerned because the implication is that I am not really saving any disk space. I believe the folder is actually empty because deleting it happens very rapidly; i.e., much more so than if it held the 15+GB of files in the real (target) folder.

Any insights before I rush out to buy a new 1 or 2TB SSD would be greatly appreciated. So, thank you in advance.

Jim F. thanks a ton I'm going to try and do that linking. Currently trying to add all of my aircraft addon's to my unused 1TB HDD to free up space on my SSD (where Windows 8.1 and FSX-SE are)

That's what I am about to start doing too, let us know how you progress Garfield, I am a bit of an incompetent computer type of person I am afraid, so I worry that I might screw something up.:(