How can i store the 80GB Installer to prevent new download

Is this possibel? Thank you , regards Peter

Hi Peter.

Are you saying that your installer is trying to make you reinstall the entire sim?

1 Like

Hi Nyx, IF i have o re-install the entire Game, i do not want to download the huge files. Or is it not possible to install it from a backup drive? Thx Peter

I’m not 100% sure we are talking about the same thing, but just in case


If you have launched the simulator after the recent update and it’s telling you that you need to install more than about ~10GB then the sim is likely trying to redownload packages you already have installed.

On the select path window (the one just before the download starts), browse for your MSFS installation directory, and select it. If your issue is the one I have in mind, that will stop you from having to redownload everything.

The installer is actually is about 900mb from memory. You seems to be asking to offline install the game files. You may be able to buy DVDs from Microsoft which would obviously work.

Or, you may be able to find them and copy them as they are downloaded and decompressed when you reinstall the game next time. How you would successfully reinstall them manually without using the Asobo installer is anyone’s guess.

1 Like

thx. i think i have to buy the dvd’s or to hope the download is working, if necessary. Peter

thank you Nyx. Hope i never need to re-install. Regards Peter

You’ve an understandable confusion about the “install files,” They should really be called the “game files,” or something like that. Those files, those 90 GBs of files, are what the sim loads from. If you deleted them after install then you deleted the game. As long as you keep them, and your install path is correct on the update screen, they should not be downloaded again. Update 5 was less than a GB for the, let’s call it the launcher, and 7 GBs and a bit for the updated files.

I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea to copy them to another drive but really it’s not necessary. I mean, they shouldn’t delete themselves so they should be safe as they are.

I try to cope with the ‘horror scenario’ re-install this way:
Every now and then I copy some folders (the sim and also others) from HD to NAS. This is easily done by software (e.g. FreeFileSync).
If I get problems in the future I hope that I will be able to write the sim folder back to HD - and that the installer would be ‘intelligent’ enough to check which files are up to date. Obviously I will have to select the folder path first.
I’ve been in a similar situation in the past and as far as I remember this worked out smoothly.

This is what I did when I was having problems launching FS (invalid path error). I copied the whole “game files” directory to another HDD, uninstalled FS and reinitialized the SSD where it was originallly installed to. After reinstalling FS, copied my “packages” folder back to SDD. Launched FS and repointed it back to the packages folder and all was good. I don’t back it up every time so I may have to download a few more “updates” but it sure beats downloading the whole kit and caboodle again.

Side note, at each patch I also remove everything from the Community folder, launch FS, make sure things appear normal and then add the Community files back one by one (never can tell when something there is going to cause issues).