Was hoping for faster disk access when flying using an SSD - (to hopefully prevent those flying pauses I still get.)
Same Drive name, Same drive letter, Same capacity - just SSD rather than HDD
Now MSFS Wants to reinstall the total application from scratch but stops with “not enough disk space” error. I cannot get beyond this …
I put back the original HDD, but same thing, now will not run but wants to reinstall the whole MSFS again - won’t get past the “not enough disk space” -
Anyone help me out of the endless cycle so I can fly again???
Hello @SpikeHughes4517,
Welcome back to the forums!
Thank you for your post! Your topic has been moved to a subcategory of General Discussion & Community Support. The Events category is meant for posting of fly-in events.
Please check out these other categories for your future posts:
- Aircraft
is where you discuss current or future planes coming to MSFS as well as assistance with liveries. - World
is where you discuss scenery, airports, and weather. - Aviate, Navigate, Communicate
is where you ask for help with flying. - Tech Talk
is where you discuss installation, graphics, drivers, performance, CTDs, and hardware. - Menus & Activities
is where you discuss activities (landing challenges, bush trips, etc), plus anything accessed by the menus including the Marketplace, settings, logbook, cameras, etc.
You should always use the Windows method to move Flight Simulator.
You may have corrupted your registry settings.
Try repairing both Gaming Services and Flight Simulator for the SSD.
If this does not work.
Remove the SSD and try and repair the original HD copy.
If you get it to work.
Reformat the SSD and then use Windows to move FS to the SSD.
Best of luck.
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If you happen to be a Steam user and purchased MSFS there, Steam allows you to move the install folder. If you right-click on your game in your library and bring up “Properties” you can see these options in “Installed Files”
In your case, you might need to restore normal functionality before this will work.
Thank you for the support responses so far. Maybe I am a real novice, but I have a complex setup of a 980 SSD M2 with my windows 11 operating system, 2 x 2TB HDD, and all I wished to do was replace 1 x 2TB HDD with 1 x 2TB SDD. All my drives have around 400 Gbs left of space on them so apart from the New SSD , I have no space to do a full reinstall . Even my 2 TB HDD with MSFS 2020 on it is full of other Steam Games also, so I don’t want to delete that. That is why I tried to clone the whole drive. (Which succeeded except now MSFS wants to reinstall everything and states “Not enough space " - I can disable one HDD for now, use those connections to reinstall the SDD and re format that. However, I fear MSFS will want to reinstall fully still. Is there anyway for me to avoid this prolonged process ??
You mention “Repair” and Gaming Services” -just where do I find those exactly?? Oh I see you have to install the XBOX app - and here I am welcomed with Buy MSFS - It doesn’t show in my XBOX app at all, Hey I can buy the delux version all over again!! however, I can choose to reinstall the game via Steam if I had the room - So obviously it is corrupted - and I do not know how !!??
Kindest
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Thanks for your response. I was actually aware of this feature, but it would only move MSFS. As I am going to no longer use the Steam HDD - I wanted to move all content including all Steam games, across to the SSD and an exact clone seemed to me to be the obvious choice
Cheers
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An exact clone should be that; an exact copy.
And should run exactly as the copied drive.
Make sure the new cloned drive has the same drive letter that the drive you cloned from had.
My own personal experience with cloning is that it is not always 100% effective, and I think it depends on the security built into the application.
I cloned a drive that had TurboTax installed on it. It would not run from the cloned drive, so there was some link to a unique drive identifier that would not let me run the application. I had to re-purchase an activation key to get it working.
I’m not sure if MSFS has such a security feature, but I could understand if it does as a barrier to piracy.
Thank for your reply. Not much I can say to this other than as far as I could possibly tell the software AOMEI took 5 plus hours and delivered what I thought was an exact copy.
There are some complications in my version of MSFS. I have links setup up to link the Community folder to another drive other than the main C: drive. This is a possible reason it became corrupted
Thanks for your reply
It is quite possible MSFS has Clone copy protection in place but the Developers do not mention this. It would be good to know in the first instance because I am now faced with a very big time consuming task of uninstalling and reinstallation. Not to mention the payware issues I will face with 3rd party aircraft and scenery.
Not sure what links you have setup.
FS2020 doe not have Clone Copy Protection.
Re-install should not require much
if your Installed Packages is intact.
Not sure if you are MS Store or not.
Uninstall FS2020 then a couple gigabytes download of FS2020 and then
point the installer to where you have FS2020 installed.
Thanks RonS,
Unfortunately I cannot even install the 1.92 Gb initial version - this is the issue. The Install is blocked by “Not Enought Disk space” regardless of the 435 Gb I have left on the drive after cloning - (I have the Steam version)
Steam version has my purchase date for this product, and all relevant purchase data, but ironically XBOX app doesn’t list my MSFS Deluxe at all so I cannot see it to “Repair it” with the XBOX app
I recently transferred my Steam version from my OS drive to a new drive and followed the directions @TenPatrol linked to. No cloning necessary, just copy and paste the necessary folders and edit the config file.
I know the concept of cloning the drive sounds easy and straight up, but it’s obvious this isn’t working for you. Time to look at the other options.
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To be honest I’m not quite sure why are you using 3rd party software or simple copy and paste while there is inbuild function for this in Windows.
It’s called robocopy Robust File Copy for Windows
In documentation there is a syntax how to use it, replace the source, destination and options and run via powershell as administrator.
Interesting, I didn’t know there was a command called Robocopy.
And wonder why there is one when we already have the Copy and XCopy
commands.
And, looking at all the command line parameters, of which there are many,
I don’t think many will take the time to learn and figure out all of it to determine what they want, or need, to use.
It seems simpler to just clone the drive.
It’s microsoft… We could’ve been using linux language to control stuff but no, instead we got powershell.
The robocopy can tolerate the network issues and it can resume the copying while XCopy doesn’t support that.
Usage is very simple just one command
Robocopy “C:\Directory A” “D:\Directory B” /mt /z /e
Thanks, I can live with that.
Good to know.
That re-purchase was actually unnecessary, Intuit has a link to a way you can re-authorize your current license on your cloned drive.
Been there-- done that – I speak from practical experience 
Back to MSFS.
MSFS has a lot of and debug / de-compile code built into it (least said the better), to help stop Piracy ??
So I do not know how the actual App may like to run on a cloned drive.
I am hoping someone here will report a successful cloning of a MSFS Drive , before I attempt it myself .
There again I have literally LOST COUNT of the number of times I have done a 100% re-install of MSFS, when trying to track down Instability issues, only to later discover it was a regression in a SU !!
Bummer. I spent some time on their support site and never found that info 
Ah, I remember now why that didn’t work. I had tossed the packaging and receipt and did not have access to the activation code from my purchase, which I believe was a required item.