Move your entire custom scenery folder to another drive

[Captain Kitten 1,563]

DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH MANAGING BACKEND ITEMS ON YOUR SYSTEM

If you, like me have X-Plane on an SSD and your ortho on another drive, then a simple shortcut of your ortho folders dropped into your custom scenery folder is enough. Many people use symbolic links for this, but I have found that a shortcut does the job just as well. And it has no performance impact unless you link to a slower than normal HDD or to a slow remote connection.

To create a shortcut just open both destinations (custom scenery folder and your ortho dump folder) and drag / drop while holding the alt key.
(sort the .ini file later)

But if you like me also are running out of space on your SSD because of ORBX True Earth or other space invading files and folders; a folder junktion might be the solution.
This makes a "gateway folder" in your x-plane folder called the same as the target folder.

This is MUCH easier than you think and takes approx 5 minutes in addition to the copy process.

Here is what you do:

• Download LinkShellExtention (Please donate if you are to keep using it)
  • Install it as instructed (It will have to restart the explorer so don't get freaked out if it closes all your folders
• MOVE your entire custom scenery folder to where ever you want it to be
• Right Click on the destination folder (the one you moved to the other drive) and click "Pick Link Source"
  • 
  • Now go to your X-Plane folder (there should NOT be any custom scenery folder in there now)
• Select the root X-Plane folder (yes, the whole x-plane folder)
  • Right Click on it and "Drop as Junction"
    • 
• You should now have a Custom Scenery folder in your x-plane root directory that is a junction to the real custom scenery folder in the other destination so ALL scenery placed there appears as usual.
  • These folders should be "mirrored" now so it should not matter in what folder you add/remove scenery

Test this and give feedback on your experience. It worked straight away for me and I can finally have ALL of GB in ORBX glory. I just dropped all of my ortho's in there as well. I am unsure how a Junction would work within a Junction so if anyone has tried that, please let me know how that went.

WARNING! DO NOT JUST DELETE THE JUNCTION / SYMLINK FOLDER! THIS CAN RESULT IN ACTUALLY DELETING THE SCENERY FOLDER!

For more tips and tricks read the Threshold Beginners Guide (link at the top of the forum)
Thanx Marten Krull for this tip!

[Anthony94 0]

On 2/8/2019 at 8:24 AM, Captain Kitten said:

If you, like me have X-Plane on an SSD and your ortho on another drive, then a simple shortcut of your ortho folders dropped into your custom scenery folder is enough. Many people use symbolic links for this, but I have found that a shortcut does the job just as well. And it has no performance impact unless you link to a slower than normal HDD or to a slow remote connection.

To create a shortcut just open both destinations (custom scenery folder and your ortho dump folder) and drag / drop while holding the alt key.
(sort the .ini file later)

 

But if you like me also are running out of space on your SSD because of ORBX True Earth or other space invading files and folders; a folder junktion might be the solution.
This makes a "gateway folder" in your x-plane folder called the same as the target folder.

This is MUCH easier than you think and takes approx 5 minutes in addition to the copy process.

Here is what you do:

• Download LinkShellExtention (Please donate if you are to keep using it)
  • Install it as instructed (It will have to restart the explorer so don't get freaked out if it closes all your folders
• MOVE your entire custom scenery folder to where ever you want it to be
• Right Click on the destination folder (the one you moved to the other drive) and click "Pick Link Source"
  • 
  • Now go to your X-Plane folder (there should NOT be any custom scenery folder in there now)
• Select the root X-Plane folder (yes, the whole x-plane folder)
  • Right Click on it and "Drop as Junction"
    • 
• You should now have a Custom Scenery folder in your x-plane root directory that is a junction to the real custom scenery folder in the other destination so ALL scenery placed there appears as usual.
  • These folders should be "mirrored" now so it should not matter in what folder you add/remove scenery

Test this and give feedback on your experience. It worked straight away for me and I can finally have ALL of GB in ORBX glory. I just dropped all of my ortho's in there as well. I am unsure how a Junction would work within a Junction so if anyone has tried that, please let me know how that went.

For more tips and tricks read the Threshold Beginners Guide (link at the top of the forum)
Thanx Marten Krull for this tip!

I can do this across multiple hard drives or ssds?

[Captain Kitten 1,563]

23 hours ago, Anthony94 said:

I can do this across multiple hard drives or ssds?

Not through the same junction as far as I know. But you can have several junctions.
SO if you are thinking of spreading your Custom Scenery folder over several discs, then I don't think that is possible. I might be wrong though and if so someone will probably correct me.

[fltsimguy 0]

I did the simlink approach after using shortcuts.  I had a bit of a mess so I deleted the simlink.  This had the effect of completely deleting all my scenery stored on the linked drive, terabytes of ortho scenery's including Orbx stuff.  I have now spend a week reestablishing all those deleted sceneries.

I'm not sure if I did something wrong or not but I will not use simlinks again.

[haithun 0]

Did you use shortcuts or symlinks? Cause afaik symlinks are tricky as most windows programs are not enabled to handle them (afaik that is still true for the explorer) and then they follow the symlink. That would explain deleting the actual content instead of the symlink.

[Captain Kitten 1,563]

On 12/3/2020 at 4:48 AM, fltsimguy said:

I did the simlink approach after using shortcuts.  I had a bit of a mess so I deleted the simlink.  This had the effect of completely deleting all my scenery stored on the linked drive, terabytes of ortho scenery's including Orbx stuff.  I have now spend a week reestablishing all those deleted sceneries.

I'm not sure if I did something wrong or not but I will not use simlinks again.

I have never had it delete my entire folder when deleting the dropped junction - but then again I use junctions and not the symlink option. And if it deleted itself you should be able to restore it all from the Recycle Bin..

As long as you treat symlink / junction as an actual folder you are fine. Too bad you deleted your entire folder but symlink is just a way for your system to trick itself to believe the folder is in another location than where it really is. And it works flawlessly within the entire operating system. Including explorer. Only problem can be with programs that don't allow for it. X-Plane is not one of those programs.