When Size really matters

i am running MSFS on my laptop which is an AMD Ryzen 5 dual GPU (2gb Radeon Vega and 3gb Nvidia) low end gaming one with 8gb of ram and a 500GB SSD. No complaints speed wise with around the mid 20's FPS at Medium which suits me. But .... when I checked to see how much room I had this morning with a view to buying ORBX KSPS Palm Springs I noted that the installation is already at about 255 GB.

 

My question is do you guys only enable the world updates for the areas you want to fly in or do you compress your SSD or put any data on external drives? I am eagerly waiting for the Australian World Update and I am sure that will be pretty big so I am concerned that I only have 55GB of free space.

Sounds like something wrong to me. I’ve got all the world updates etc and my main MSFS folder is only 198gb (there will be addons included in that)

This doesn’t include my community folder.

 

Regards

Steve

Mine is 182GB including my Community folder. Are you using the Rolling Cache option in MSFS? You can also remove all the stuff that you will never use in MSFS such as the lessons, bush trips, tours, etc. Use the Content Manager for that. I would not remove any planes.

Thanks for replies. Is the content manager part of MSFS or a 3rd party add on.

Found that and some vids on how to use it. Thanks

Thanks for replies. Is the content manager part of MSFS or a 3rd party add on.

 

It's part of MSFS and actually a very important one.

 

You can delete from the Content Manager all the world updates, airports, challenges, lessons, aircraft, etc. you don't want to use, and you'll be safe, because it won't let you delete any mandatory content. Even if you delete all the planes you find there, you'll still have 16 planes which are mandatory (Premium Deluxe edition). In fact I wish I could delete even more, since I use almost exclusively third party aircraft and scenery!!

 

That's the best way to keep MSFS hard disk occupancy as small as possible.

Edited January 16, 2022 by danbiosca

There is a persistent and seemingly widespread misunderstanding about the size of updates -- some people talk about 170, 200 Gb or more! From my experience, the net increase in disc space for updates is typically just a few Gb each time, because most of the update content overwrites existing files. So, the actual demand on disc space by updates is modest and gradual.

the biggest update I had was around 4gig

There is a persistent and seemingly widespread misunderstanding about the size of updates -- some people talk about 170, 200 Gb or more! From my experience, the net increase in disc space for updates is typically just a few Gb each time, because most of the update content overwrites existing files. So, the actual demand on disc space by updates is modest and gradual.

 

Well that is good to know. I have cleared up my HD and used the content manager and now have about 150 gb free so I am much happier.

There is a persistent and seemingly widespread misunderstanding about the size of updates -- some people talk about 170, 200 Gb or more! From my experience, the net increase in disc space for updates is typically just a few Gb each time, because most of the update content overwrites existing files. So, the actual demand on disc space by updates is modest and gradual.

 

Absolutely true, thanks for making it clear.

Even so, I think that keeping the Content Manager as clean as possible from unwanted items is worth it, and nobody should be afraid to do it.