Can't RELINK - GSX Pro and External USB drives

[virtuali]

So or a hard drive thats exfat I should use symbolic or junction?

None of them. Maybe this whole thread is not clear enough: you can't use that drive at all, unless you reformat it in NTFS

[Westtomfc]

I cant use the addon linker because There is no relink button there now but I cannot reformat the drive.

[virtuali]

I cant use the addon linker because There is no relink button there now but I cannot reformat the drive.

There's no link in the Addon Linker because also the Addon Linker can't do miracles and allow a feature that is not supported on your drive. You must format the drive, there no other choices.

[Karim.K]

Thanks for the help ! Ill probably just format the drive. Any chance theres a way to change a ssd to NTFS without losing the data ?

There might be utilities that allow to do this, but I can't say I tested it. Most of them convert from Fat32 to NTFS without losing data, those that convert from exFat to NTFS are harder to come by.

Don't you have something you can backup the whole thing on ? If you have, just copy the whole MSFS content ( the folder that contains Official and Community ) there, reformat the drive and copy it from the backup.

I got a new HDD with NTFS and moved my entire MSFS to it using steam. Now when I  go into the installer, its still reading that the game is on my E drive which it isnt anymore. Uninstalled FSDT installer and addon manager and re installed and its still reading that MSFS is in E drive when its in D drive. Whats the solution ?

[virtuali]

I got a new HDD with NTFS and moved my entire MSFS to it using steam

Steam will only move the MSFS executable files, not the Content. If you had the content in a custom location, you must manually edit the last line of your UserCfg.OPT with the new path.

%APPDATA%\Microsoft Flight Simulator\USERCFG.OPT

[virtuali]

I have just moved my community folder with a link to a new drive as it was full. I have not moved Addon manager, but now GSX will not work. The couatll engine is still working. Any help anyone ?

That's the wrong way to move the Community folder. I don't know why there are users and tutorials that keep suggesting to do that, when there's an OFFICIAL method that is supported by the sim and it's 100% safe.

First, you should NOT move out just the Community folder and make a link to it. This is an hack, which will of course cause problems to any proper program, like GSX, which assume you used the correct procedure.

MSFS supports having its CONTENT to a different drive, and it's Content it's not just the Community folder, it's the parent folder that contains it and the Official folder too. MSFS assumes ONE single location for all the content, and its path should be updated in the lastline of the UserCfg.OPT file, this is what the simulator uses as standard, and this is of course what GSX uses to know where *both* your Community and Official folders are located.

So, as an example, if you have an external drive ( formatted in NTFS!! ), called E: and you want to move the MSFS Content to an "MSFS" folder in E: in the proper way, you must do as follows:

- Create an empty folder named E:\MSFS

- Move the Community folder there (the real folder, not the link), which will result with it staying here:

E:\MSFS\Community

- Move the Official folder there (the real folder, not the link), which will result with it staying here:

E:\MSFS\Official   ( this one will contain either OneStore or Steam folders depending on the version, but if you moved the complete Official folder, you don't have to worry about it )

- Edit the UserCfg.OPT file located here:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\USERCFG.OPT ( MS Store version )
%APPDATA%\Microsoft Flight Simulator\USERCFG.OPT  ( Steam version )

- Edit the last line which contains the InstalledPackagesPath  text, to be like this:

InstalledPackagesPath "E:\MSFS"

Don't forget the quotes around the path.


Remove any Symbolic links you created, which are useless and will cause issues now. THIS is the proper, official and supported way to move the whole MSFS Content to another drive, which STILL must be formatted as NTFS for GSX ( and any other add-on that uses Symbolic links ) and, not only it's the best way because is the official way, but it's the one that will save you THE MOST SPACE, because the Official folder is about 160GB, so you want to move that one too.

[Lerno1]

I understand how problematic it is to have a drive formatted in exFAT rather than NTFS, but is there any way to provide at least an option for those who use exFAT and would rather not reformat? I would suggest the option to directly install in the Community folder without having to worry about links at all (other addons do it this way), though I have no idea how tightly GSX is coded to rely on the addon being physically present in the Addon Manager folder.

[virtuali]

I have no idea how tightly GSX is coded to rely on the addon being physically present in the Addon Manager folder.

It's not tightly coded at all.

The two GSX packages can very well reside in the Community folder as real copies instead of Symlink, that would still work, precisely because if a folder it's a real folder or a Simlink, it doesn't matter to GSX while running, because GSX doesn't know or care or expects the packages in the Community folder to be links or real folders, it's completely transparent to it, that's the point of using Simlinks in the first place.

So, if you rather not reformat the drive, you can just copy the two main GSX packages in the Community folder manually, and it will work.

Your problems will be the installer/updater because:

- you'll have to keep a 2nd copy of the GSX packages in the Addon Manager folder anyway, because THIS will the the one being updated when needed. This means you'll consume double the space normally required to install GSX.

- you'll have to setup a way to synchronize ( not just copy!! it must be a one way sync, because files might be removed or change location from an update to the next ) the "updated" copy in the Addon Manager to the "installed" copy in the Community folder, and this process should be run each time we have an update.

Without using extra software, a batch file containing the following lines:

ROBOCOPY "c:\Program Files (x86)\Addon Manager\MSFS\fsdreamteam-gsx-pro" "D:\MSFS\Community\fsdreamteam-gsx-pro" /MIR
ROBOCOPY "c:\Program Files (x86)\Addon Manager\MSFS\fsdreamteam-gsx-world-of-jetways" "D:\MSFS\Community\fsdreamteam-gsx-world-of-jetways" /MIR

This is an example, assuming you installed the Addon Manager in the default folder, and your MSFS content is on an D: external drive in an MSFS folder, and should be able to sync the Addon Manager copy with the Community copy. You would have to launch this batch file after every GSX update.

In my opinion, having to go through all this hassle, every time, and not being able to use other add-ons that take advantage of Simlinks, like the Addon Linker, is not worth a one-time only reformat, which would only require having some space on another external drive to make a backup of it, to reformat, and you'll have more reliability against data corruption, because ExFat doesn't support Journaling and Redundant File tables, which can prevent lots of issues due to data corruption, which are even more common on external drives, for example if the cable is disconnected during data transfer, with ExFat you'll like have corrupted data, while NTFS can usually recover from that.

[Airbus1234]

It says it's installed and it should work but it doesn't create the link to the community folder. Please help me i've tried everything for 6 months. Pleeeease.

[virtuali]

It says it's installed and it should work but it doesn't create the link to the community folder. Please help me i've tried everything for 6 months. Pleeeease.

It's no possible it could say "Installed" without a link in the Community folder, because in order to say "Installed", but button checks for both links to be in the Community folder, even if only one was missing, it would say "Relink".