Addons on a separate HDD?

User Support Hub Hardware & Peripherals
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Hi folks!

With the increasing number of addons available, I am starting to consider moving them on my HDD and leaving the sim on the Windows SSD.

I am afraid of a big hit on performance, what do you think? Have you tried this?

Thanks for your feedback!

Cheers

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Hi there,

I’m running my windows 10 on a seperate 500GB SSD and MSFS on a 2TB SSD ( both ssd’s are NVME type for fast performance)
I’ve got all add-ons installed on MSFS ssd but am using MSFS addon linker which stops all airports add-ons getting loaded. It works great for me and am sure it will help you to install your sceneries on a seperate HDD/SSD.

Good luck.
Leo de Haan
Scotland

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Most addons aren’t that big, so I doubt you’ll notice much. Maybe during startup when MSFS scans the directories.

But why don’t you just give it a try yourself? Performance depends on so many factors, noone will be able to tell you definitely.

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I will, thank you :slight_smile:

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When Windows reported “Insufficient space” whilst trying to load (yet) another addon I realised it was time to sort out my files!
Basic system and other programmes on a 1TB SSD but still plenty of room there. MSFS and it’s ancilliaries, including my Addons store, all on a separate 1TB Nvme. But now that the store file is getting stupidly big (I’m a glutton for something that “looks interesting and I might use”) I’ve decided something must be done. Don’t want to fill up my Windows SSD but I do have quite a lot of spare capacity on a couple of external HDDs I use for storage so for now I’ve moved “Scenery” files over to one of those. I use MSFS Addons Linker, which will happily load from the HDD and up to now I’ve not noticed any deterioration in performance. Of course once the files are loaded into the Sim it doesn’t really matter where they’ve come from and so far I’ve not noticed MSFS Addons Linker taking any longer to do so - although I’ll admit that starting the manager initially is getting longer, obviously due to the amount of “stuff” it’s searching. I tend to leave it running in the background, takes up no resources.

So my advice is go and give it a try, just check your HDD is in good health before you start. I personally wouldn’t want to “lose” 800GB of downloads! But DO use an addons manager, makes life SO much easier.

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Note that the sim doesn’t simply load all scenery somewhere.
It just builds indexes on startup of all installed packages and loads them mostly on the fly except for the data needed when spawning (aircraft, systems, departure airport scenery etc. which is loaded when you press “fly”). All other scenery is loaded on demand later on.

Having a huge scenery with big texture files on a fragmented HDD could still cause stutters when approaching that airport due to slower access speed from HDD. But that’s a worst case scenario.
As I said, there might be circumstances that might cause performance impact in the sim, it just depends from so many factors, it’s hard to tell.

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