Hi guys, my MSFS is install in the C drive which is an 1 tb ssd samsung. With all addons i am reaching already 80% of its capacity. Now i am thinking in expanding to 2 tb SSD.
What are the right steps to do this change? Do i need to reinstall from scratch MSFS?
will i lose all configurations e.g. the controls?
Thanks for the support!
One alternative solution to “change” your 1 tb SSD drive is to install a second second drive, and use MSFS Addons Linker (or the symbolic link feature of Windows) to virtually move your Community to a second drive.
Depending of your Community folder size, it will free up space on your existing drive but also load balance the loading time between your two drives 
Based on your current main concern, it won’t change anything regarding your MSFS installation (controls, setup…)
Lot of tutos everywhere on Internet as a lot of users are now managing their addons this way.
Hi felipe, is the drive a standard SSD or nvme drive? If a standard drive there must surely be more connections available to install a second sdd on your motherboard?
If it’s a nvme drive, look to see if there is a second port for another on your motherboard.
Either way it should be easy to install a second drive and then just either move your community add-ons to the other larger drive or use the move option in the main program settings in windows to shift the main installation of msfs to the larger drive.
Even If you only have space for one drive and need to reinstall, all your control settings are stored in the cloud so you will not have to set them up again.
Hope this helps somewhat.
Yepp, I’d certainly vote for this approach. I’ve got around 200G in a “community staging folder” where I keep all my add-ons, just selecting the ones I need for a particular session using MSFS Addon Linker (it lets you set profiles for particular sets of addons wanted for different scenarios).
If you change from a samsung to another samsung, probably with samsung magician free software you can directly clone the 1tb in the 2tb and then don’t lose anything. I have done it other times.
The other option is to install the second disk and copy there all comunity folder and and use add on linker to point them with a link to the right community, this way you don’t reinstall everything and get all heavy add ons on the new disk.
Running an SSD at near capacity is not advisable, as the “wear levelling count” (which determines the life of the SSD) will go up fast, so you certainly need to do something.
Even switching to a bigger SSD, it would be a good idea to keep your existing one as a second drive for the Community folder (as others have suggested), to spread the load.
You can just move the MSFS content files anywhere. It’ll detect they are gone when the game launches and you’ll have an option to point it to the location. Same as when you installed the game for the first time. It’ll take a few minutes to validate the files and then work as usual without full re-download.
Same if you reinstall the system. You can back up the files somewhere and restore them.
This is about the files it downloads in-game - the folder with Official and Community inside. The store part you’ll need to re-download if you reinstall, but it’s just a few GB.
You probably have a Sata drive slot. I recommend buying a 1tb Sata SSD and moving your packages folder over to it.
Same on the use of MSFS Addons Linker. I find it reduces sim-loading times substantially ever since I’ve created those profiles (which is actually only making maps in the windows folder, the program does the rest). My current setup looks like this, allowing me to clickly pick Airliners or General Aviation and selecting the region(s) I’m flying, keeping the rest of it out. When clicking Airliners, it for instance also loads GSX Pro into the Sim, when on GA it doesn’t as I don’t really use it on a GA ramp. Also, using liveries per region clears up the aircraft selection pages.
Overall though, I did get the 2TB disk about 18 months ago so for me, all is still on the same harddisk. It’s a good peace of mind as other games too just keep growing in size.
Hello @FelipeTurbay,
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Hi, yes is an SSD. I just though that the game .exe if move to another drive wont be able to work since it woulnt have an operative system
which kind of file are these? we can i find them?
Which platform did you purchase MSFS from. If Microsoft Store, then there is a “move game” to another drive. I recently got a 2 TB SSD (Nvme) to use as a dedicated MSFS drive. The move game option worked just fine, but it took a couple of hours to complete. Didn’t have to fiddle with the community folder either.
By default it’s
%AppData%..\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages
If you changed the folder during installation (which is always a good idea) it’s whereever you picked.
I have two NVMe SSDs. One is a 512GB drive that hat the OS and some small apps the other is a 2TB drive that I install larger things like games and VMs. These are mounted as C: and D:.
For MSFS I simply change the install folder to one I created on the D: drive.
Cloning the disk to bigger does not change anything but size. Samsung Magician might be the best option for Samsung disks or some free cloning program for other. I use Macrium Reflect,pretty simple in basic disks.
Yeah I have it with the Microsoft store, could you please share more details on how this move game option works? Thanks you 
Oh got it, now I know what you mean, thanks! yes this could be an option to try!
I have one question regarding this method. If I move my community folder to an external drive using this tool, what happens when there is an update for products such as Pmdg or navigraph? I think these are installed automatically in the real community folder right?
Everytime I launch any kind of updater (fbw, ini-builds, orbx…), I activate this addon (Addons Linker makes it virtualy visible in the community folder) and the updater thinks its installed as it is.
Caution when you wrote “external drive” with the performance of this drive. For example, even SSD but connected via USB port the performance is far from (for example) an internal NVME.
