Windows 10, MSFS2020 and New SSD Card

You have all been very helpful to me in the past and I thank you. I have another question. I bought and installed an 1TB SSD Hard Drive that I figued I would just put MSFS on that, for the sake of speed. But its such a large hard drive I would still have about 850GB of free space left. So after reading around, I see that I could move Windows 10 over to the new SSD card, which everyone says speeds up boot time and helps other programs run quicker also. Sounds like a good idea. However, I only want to move Windows to the new drive for now. I DO NOT WANT TO CLONE MY ENTIRE HDD DRIVE. I want to leave my files and all installed programs in the HDD drive for now. Is this possible? Can I move Windows into the SSD drive and also install FS2020 on it and leave it at that? Will the programs that are currently on the HDD drive know how to work if Windows is now on a different drive? And would they indeed work more efficiently? I don't want to uninstall my programs from the HDD card and reinstall them on the SSD card because I would lose all of the settings and customizations that the program has acquired over the years. Also, does the drive letter of the hard drive that Windows is installed on automatically become the "C" drive? Does that cause a problem when a program is looking for a file that is no longer on that new "C" drive? Can anyone help me figure out what I'm talking about and what to do? Thanks, Dave

If you want to put Windows on that drive you'll need to start from square one. The good news is that your settings are saved to the cloud and if you re-install MSFS2020 your old assignments will be there,

Hi In my opinion its not a good Idear to have anything much on your system drive other than windows and a few mandatory files, I have my msfs installation and community folder on a separate drive and steam games on another drive, windows I installed on a M2 drive the thing is if you install Msfs 2020 on the same drive as windows your community folder will be a pain to get to ,also if you need to Re-install windows at all as msfs2020 is an app it would most likely get removed ,of course you do what you want just giving advice and my opinion the way I have mine the Sim load in a couple of minutes I dont think you would gain much if anything have your Installation on your system drive,of course as I said its entirely up to you what you do.

 

Kind regards

 

Andrew

Hi In my opinion its not a good Idear to have anything much on your system drive other than windows and a few mandatory files, I have my msfs installation and community folder on a separate drive and steam games on another drive, windows I installed on a M2 drive the thing is if you install Msfs 2020 on the same drive as windows your community folder will be a pain to get to ,also if you need to Re-install windows at all as msfs2020 is an app it would most likely get removed ,of course you do what you want just giving advice and my opinion the way I have mine the Sim load in a couple of minutes I dont think you would gain much if anything have your Installation on your system drive,of course as I said its entirely up to you what you do.

 

Kind regards

 

Andrew

 

I agree. I’ve always understood that Flight Sim should always be installed on a separate drive to Windows. I’ve always done this over the years & found it works well this way.

I currently have two (M2) solid drives... a 500gb with Windows on it... & a 1Tb for flight sim.

 

Regards

Steve

I agree. I’ve always understood that Flight Sim should always be installed on a separate drive to Windows. I’ve always done this over the years & found it works well this way.

I currently have two (M2) solid drives... a 500gb with Windows on it... & a 1Tb for flight sim.

 

Regards

Steve

 

With a traditional hard drive, having flight sim on a separate drive was preferred, however, with an SSD it doesn't make nearly as much of a difference (provided there is enough space).

Having Windows on the SSD will help speed up boot times and other system related tasks, and the system will feel much snappier. As has been mentioned, however, to move just Windows itself you are looking at a complete reinstall of it and your applications. The drive letters will change and the new Windows install will also include a new registry, both of which will break many, if not all, of your applications too.