Hard drive space

HELP,

FSX has turned into a monster, taking up most of my hard drive space. I'm not a computer whiz and don't know if this has been asked before, But is there a way to make my FSX folder smaller without having to delete a bunch of stuff???

You can run file compression on the entire drive.

Lots of FSX stuff can be moved to an external hd and pointed at in FSX. This includes aircraft, AI aircraft, and many types of scenery.

So yes it is very possible without deleting a bunch of stuff.

HELP,

FSX has turned into a monster, taking up most of my hard drive space. I'm not a computer whiz and don't know if this has been asked before, But is there a way to make my FSX folder smaller without having to delete a bunch of stuff???

I have never used it, but I believe Windows has an option to compact the files. Don't know how this may affect loading/offloading times.

Something I do with a lot of aircraft especially if you have several liveries, and is not a big secret because Microsoft already does it with the included models (B737_800 for example) which you can examine to see what I'm talking about.

1. Create a master Texture folder for all the COMMON textures such as wheels, interior parts, night textures (L), etc, etc, that are NOT exterior painted parts.

2. For each LIVERY (AKA Repaint), delete all the common textures above EXCEPT for exterior painted parts such as fuselage, tail, wings, horizontal stabilizer, etc.

3. Add a texture.cfg pointing to the master Texture folder in EACH of the livery folders. You can just copy it from the B737_800.

Would look something like this...

Model

Panel

Sound

Texture

Texture.ACA

Texture.BAW

Texture.QFA

Texture.UAL

When you load a livery, FSX will first look in LIVERY texture folder, not find all the textures called by the model, then look in the COMMON texture folder as instructed to by the texture.cfg.

With just one plane you can save HUGE amounts of disk space by not keeping duplicate, common textures in each livery folder.

I also like to convert all the .BMP textures to .DDS with DXTbmp which saves even more space. This is optional.

This is my TDS 787-10 Trent...

The COMMON textures total 116 MB

Each Livery folder is now only 48 MB each instead of 164 MB!

So I'm saving 464 MB (116 MB x 4 additional liveries) of hard drive space for just this 1 Aircraft by using a COMMON texture folder. I have over 10 liveries in the -800 models saving over a gigabyte in each of those two. It adds up fast.

The trick is to be able to determine what parts are common and which are painted parts. In the TDS example, sometimes a painter will customize the Ground Servicing Vehicles or Cargo containers to match the airline. If so these can be placed in the livery folder and will OVERRIDE the common texture because they are loaded (Found) first. After doing one aircraft, you'll get a feel for it so the rest become easier. The ONLY trade off is a slight delay in texture loading that you may not even notice because they are being loaded from 2 folders.

NOTE: Some payware aircraft all ready use this method for disk saving. For example, Carenado calls the common folder 'Texture.Common'. The 'Texture' folder is used to store the 'White' or unpainted livery.

Did you try file compression on the entire drive?

If you only have one HDD, and both your Operating System (I'm going to presume Microsoft Windows) and FSX are installed on it, I would strongly advise against this.

...and stop counting kilobytes.

Savings are in GIGABYTES, not kilobytes. I would rather be smart and manage the aircraft folders on my 10K RPM drives then buy a $60 refurbished 2-terabyte slow drive and fill it full of bloat. But that's just me.

Savings are in GIGABYTES, not kilobytes. I would rather be smart and manage the aircraft folders on my 10K RPM drives then buy a $60 refurbished 2-terabyte slow drive and fill it full of bloat. But that's just me.

Don't assume a 10K drive is faster than a 7200rpm drive. Speed is the product of rotation speed times density. Density has gone up a LOT.

Cheers!

Luke

Don't assume a 10K drive is faster than a 7200rpm drive. Speed is the product of rotation speed times density. Density has gone up a LOT.

 

Cheers!

 

Luke

Were straying off the OP's problem of running out of space. I'm not going to get drawn into any performance debates... Thank you very much.

I gave an option to keep all his airplanes WITHOUT deleting any, only the duplicate files of each to regain more space. If anybody else can offer similar help, I'm sure he would appreciate it.

Savings are in GIGABYTES, not kilobytes.

Sorry if I seemed to be knocking your solution. I really wasn't, and I'm sure your technique would be of benefit to someone who's locked into a small hard drive, unable to replace it for whatever reason. I was just pointing out that storage is cheap nowadays, and not just for refurbished drives. The shift from HD to SDD is putting pressure on the drive makers, and current prices show it.

I recently saw a 500GB SSD for $149, a sweet deal.

anthonyms,

When downloading an Nvidia driver, You think you download one small file, and that does everything.

Instead, that file downloads the files of the real driver installer to folder inside the folder C:\Nvidia

Each driver get's it's own folder in there. With the number of the driver as name.

Then that installer is run.

Afterwards, maybe storing that folder on an External drive is a good idea, in case the download ever goes offline. But keeping it on the C:\drive is a waste of space.

I just deleted 3 driver folders in C:\Nvidia and gained 2.21 gb

The first time I figured this out I think there were 6 folders in there. Saved over 10 gb back then.:)