File compacting

I have FSX and addons on a dedicated SSD, and I am soon running out of space. Win 7 provides an option for "compacting" the files on a drive. Has anyone tried this feature with FSX or other sims/games, and how did it work? I would expect a penalty in write and read time, but how much?

CPU I7-960 OC @ 3.8 Ghz, Asetek Water Cooler

Asus P6T X58 MB, 6Gb RAM Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600Mhz

EVGA nVidia GTX 570, 1.28Gb DDR5 RAM

1 Tb SATA II HD, Kingston 128Gb SSD (FSX only)

Apevia 800W PS, Win 7 64-bit Acceleration

OrbxFTX Global BASE, OrbxFTX Global Vector, OrbxFTX open LCEurope & open LC NA1, FS Genesis World Mesh, DX10 Fixer

It won't gain much space at all. It may slow the system too. Just buy a bigger ssd. Often they come with free copies of Image software. Use that to transfer the whole drive to the new disk.

After transfer the new C will still be the old size and the rest of the disk is unpartitioned space. Then when running from the new disk, simply extend the C partition to fill the whole disk. So all space becomes available for storage.

While you can use mklink to offset certain files and folders to a HD, why would you want to when SSD's are now so cheap and plentiful? Simply adding a second or larger SSD will give you all the space you need for a flight sim.

I however, follow the alternative school of thought:

You have boated your FSX installation to unsustainable levels through adding piles and piles of crap. Time for a viciously good clear out!

As il88pp has stated, the gain by compacting is very small, in fact, not all files can be compacted. If getting another SSD is not a viable option you could look at utilising space on the 1Tb HDD.

You could, for example, move all of your addon scenery to it. FSX is quite happy to load scenery stored on other drives/partitions and with very little (it any) lag due to read/write processes. You could even move stuff to a portable HDD/USB stick, although in this instance you would get some lag.

If necessary, you could leave the major addons (Orbx etc) on the SSD and only move other addons you may have (like airports etc).

For example moving your FSGenesis install onto the HDD would free up about 12Gb

FTR I have all of my addon scenery, less a few payware items that will only install into a valid FSX folder, stored outside of FSX. I have 2 rigs - one has the install location on the same drive and on the other it is on a separate partiion but on the same drive.

BTW a handy tool for this type of set up is Scenery Config Editor (found at https://sourceforge.net/projects/fs-sceditor/. Its a great little tool and makes managing/updating the FSX scenery listing a breeze with all of the work being done outside of the FSX.

[quote=mallcott;1984886

You have boated your FSX installation to unsustainable levels through adding piles and piles of crap. Time for a viciously good clear out!

That's an interesting point of view. So in your opinion what constitutes "crap? Are added aircraft & scenery crap? Or are there other things lurking in there I'm not aware of?

I admit to having a lot of data storage tied up with FSX. But I'm not sure how to go about deciding what is "crap" to clear out without affecting my enjoyment.

Please advise. I'm sure I will be among those who benefit from your thoughts.

Michael

Simple:

1: Anything that you haven't actually accessed from within the sim in the past four weeks.

If you don't use it, NOW, you don't need it. So dump it.

This includes addon scenery, aircraft, regions and even texture options that you aren't using. It's not like you can't reinstall them if you suddenly decide after some fava beans and a nice Chianti that you would like to install them once more.

Example: I installed all the FTX AU and New Zealand sceneries, but am currently flying in Europe. They're gone. Saves many gigs right there.

2: Addons that you remove often leave behind folders and files. Dump them.

3: Files that you have backed up, overwritten, adjusted through manual editing. Dump them (or if you must, save them away from your precious SSD, sim installation and drive space - a backup hard drive should ALWAYS contain a complete vanilla installation of FSX with SP1 and SP2 or Acceleration anyway - It's the law.

4: If you can't bear to part with something you're not using then create a storage folder and simply move it to a backup hard drive - in my example above I also installed FTX AU AI - creating dozens of folders in the aircraft folder. Cut'n'paste and they're no longer clogging up the SSD and slowing startup of the sim...

If you don't know whether it's `crap` or not, then it should never have been installed in the first place.

ONLY install `must haves` in your sim installation. You and only YOU are responsible for what you allow in your sim and on your computer.

Everything else IS crap, and should be removed

That's how `vicious` keeps your installation safe, fast and compact. And money in your pocket rather than funding utterly unnecessary drive space.

How much is a one SSD 1T (internal) going for these days?

Cheers,

I used this free program recently to transfer 65 GP of ORBX scenery from my FSX dedicated SSD to another hard drive.

It worked very well and was easy to use.

http://junction-link-magic.software.informer.com/2.0/

how much is a one ssd 1t (internal) going for these days?

 

Cheers,

$300-$400 usd.

Thanks guys for all the good info that I am seriously considering. Offloading scenery to the hard drive seems to be the most economical solution and, if it penalizes performance too much, a bigger SSD is becoming affordable.

And mallcott - I don't have any crap on my SSD, I fly all over the world in anything from Piper Cubs to Airbus 380s.

$300-$400 usd.

We're almost there. Thanks.

Cheers,