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Installing MSFS 2024 on Other Drives than C Is Problematic. Storage Issue with Cache Explained

Nov 20, 2024

Installing MSFS 2024 on Other Drives than C Is Problematic. Storage Issue with Cache Explained

As a seasoned gamer with countless hours spent navigating digital skies in Microsoft Flight Simulator series since its inception back in 1997, I must say that the latest addition to this franchise, MSFS 2024, has been a roller coaster ride – a turbulent one at that. The game’s launch was fraught with issues, from non-functional planes to slow downloading speeds, and let’s not forget about the infamous C drive space consumption issue.

Aviation is a relatively fresh achievement of humanity. People are fascinated by airplanes and many of us would like to experience it firsthand, yet flying our own plane is not only hard to do but also very expensive. Microsoft has been offering Flight Simulators since 1997, giving us at least a gist of this feeling. However, the latest part in this series, MSFS 2024, had a very hard landing. Including problems with not working planes, issues with launch, or even very slow downloading. There is at least one more difficulty that we’ll have to face – the game eating up space on C drive. Let’s focus on this specific challenge and analyze how cache works in this production.

C drive cache in MSFS 2024 explained

In 2020, Asobo Studio left aviation enthusiasts in awe with Microsoft Flight Simulator. It offered players the opportunity to explore the globe realistically due to the use of precise geographical data, including terrain and object details streamed directly from their servers. However, this didn’t stop the game from consuming disk space at an astounding rate. Although the storage requirements for MSFS 2024 are three times smaller, it can still deplete your C drive’s free storage. What causes this? The culprit is cache data accumulation.

As a gamer, when I first download the game and pick the folder location, it’ll primarily set up the essential parts in that chosen spot, regardless of whether I opted for a different drive than C. However, the key point to remember is that the game will still pull data from an AppData location on my C drive while running.

In the highly intricate and comprehensive simulation of the world in MSFS 2024, the volume of data transferred could be substantial. However, there’s a solution for managing it effectively.

Changing cache location in MSFS 2024

Changing cache location from in-game settings menu is one thing, yet it still doesn’t move planes, airports, scenery and others that are being streamed. Cunning players have thought of a more permanent solution for this issue which includes creating a symlink that will “reroute” streaming to the directory of your choosing.

To implement this solution, you have to:

  1. Open the roaming location of the game (as mentioned above),
  2. Copy all the contents of “Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024” folder to the desired destination,
  3. Delete the original “Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024″ folder from Roaming location,
  4. Open CLI (Command-line interface) of your choosing as an administrator (Terminal, Command Prompt, Powershell) and run the following line:

for example:

After completing that task, you should now be ready to proceed without any issues when interacting with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 and sending all data to your preferred folder. Since a significant number of players might have encountered crashes due to insufficient storage space, this method may help mitigate such problems for some users, but it’s important to keep in mind that success is not guaranteed.

Back in 2020, I stumbled upon a nifty fix for MSFS that worked like a charm. Now, here we are with the latest title, and it’s baffling to me why this solution wasn’t incorporated. Given all the issues this game has been facing, it’s not really shocking that they haven’t tackled this feature (at least not yet).

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2024-11-20 14:02