moving to a new computer

[jackryan172]

Hi All,

Im thinking its time to replace my computer with fs9 on it. I am afraid of the reinstall of literally hundreds of add-ons for fs9 so I have been putting it off. Is there some way to move a working install of fs9 to a new computer without having to go through the pain of reinstall. Is there a document on how to do it successfully?

Thanks,
Sean

[Butcherbird17]

There are a couple ways you can do it. Either way you need to take the h/d out of your old rig and
install it to the new one. Once that is done, you can just copy/paste fs9 to the new rig's h/d or its
own partition. Or leave it on the old drive and create a new shortcut to fs9. Either way will work.
Plus get the Flight1 registry utility to add the registry key for fs9 on your new rig.
My fs9 install is about 10 years old, and has been moved 4 times in that span and still runs great.

Joe

[Golden Rocket]

I am afraid of the reinstall of literally hundreds of add-ons for fs9

With hundreds of addons you should do regular backups anyway. You normally install a basic FS9 from your disks, in order to get it registered in your system. Then you delete the entire FS9 folder and paste your entire backup. That'all.

Bernard

[Navtech]

Then you delete the entire FS9 folder and paste your entire backup. That'all.

If all the addon's are freewares addon's that must work fine
If this is paywares addon's (with registered stuff in the registry base) this will be some problems with those addon's IMHO

[Mick]

With hundreds of addons you should do regular backups anyway. You normally install a basic FS9 from your disks, in order to get it registered in your system. Then you delete the entire FS9 folder and paste your entire backup. That'all.

Bernard

Like he said.

This is a good reason to have an external drive for your backup copy. If you don't already have one, this would be a good time to get one and copy FS9 to it. You'll have to do a basic install into your new rig from the CD-ROMs to get the necessary registry entries, then replace the stock installation with a copy of your back-up from the external drive, like Golden Rocket said.

Don't forget to install FS9 to some location other than the standard Program Files or Program Files (x86) so you don't run into the permissions problems that others have mentioned in other threads.

[expat]

I am in FSX, but what is the best way to back up FS on an external drive? I already keep my 100s + aircraft and payware downloads on the external. My primary install, live aircraft, AI (lost them all on the last pc rebuild) addon/custom scenery, gauges etc etc are on an internal SSD. Have seen others go to CD (but they get lost, scratched or in our household both - most of them) or do some kind "imaging" which I don't fully understand. Thing is, the external HD can also fail for different reasons (ie. knocked over by dog or child or just dies).

expat

[aeromed202]

Doing this at your own speed rather than due to a crash or other fatal comp failure puts you miles ahead of the game. Pull or have someone pull the HD with the game or whatever other FS files there are and install it into a bay in the new rig. A benefit would be if you still have XP and will have to switch to W7 or W8 soon, it will already be in the best configuration as the non-primary C drive. If you are buying off the shelf or having something built, at least get that old HD out and on the desk. Another option is to buy a portable HD dock to access the HD and copy over any or all of FS to the new one, but that will lead to the problems FS has living on the C drive with W7.

[Tom Clayton]

"Imaging" is sort-of a deluxe version of backing up your files. It's actually taking a full snapshot of your entire hard drive and cloning it to a backup. If something crashes, you restore your last backed up image. Of course, this takes specialized software, including a bootable disk or thumb drive. Also, depending on the amount of data, the process can take hours. But... I can tell you from experience, the effort can be worth it. My last desktop suffered a critical corruption of some can't-live-without-it system file and my backed up image was the only way to get back up and running again!

Edit: Some of these look promising. I'd look deeper, but I no longer have the external storage space to use them.
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/sof...ommend-1137924

[Mick]

... Thing is, the external HD can also fail...

Well, one would hope that the internal and external drives wouldn't go belly up at the same time, so that whichever drive dies, you still have all your stuff on the other one.

The odds of losing both internal and external drives at the same time must be miniscule.
But it happened to me...

Some expert (and expensive!) professional data recovery saved most of my stuff, but I'm still largely reconstructing Golden Wings and "FS1954" instead of just copying them onto my no-longer-new rig.

It goes to show that anything is possible, but still, the chances of losing both internal and external drives at the same time must be close to zero, and I continue to have everything on my internal drive backed up to an external one.