Too many KSP versions on my PC

[Renegrade]

I think you just found out why WinSXS is not useless. The OS needs it to function correctly (or at all in some cases). It's very likely a lot of things broke in subtle (or not so subtle) ways you simply didn't notice, or that later got fixed.

SxS is a terrible concept. It combines all of the size and memory usage of static linking with all of the slowness and unreliability of dynamic linking. My own SxS assembly is 11.78g in 62,647 files (NT workstation 6.1. I mean Windows 7). Ew.

That being said, you're quite correct, it's a core component these days. Do not edit/move/delete.

I would not put them on a flash drive, since they're so easy to lose and if they fail you're screwed. A USB HDD would be just fine though since they're a lot easier to keep track of and have a low rate of failure vs flash drives. But it is certainly possible to play from a drive connected via USB.

Actually, in my experience, the flash drives are more reliable (I do tend to buy high end units, so that could very well be putting a bias in there), but external hard drives are less so. The problem, I think, is that the hard drives aren't designed to be enclosed quite that tightly without any provision for cooling, and end up overheating. That and they're more sensitive to physical shock. My old WD Passport 80 has eaten a fair amount of information and failed to start on many an occasion..

Er... unless you're talking about the 3.5" enclosures that have little fans and stuff.. I generally don't use those though as they aren't as portable -- they probably are more reliable if treated gently.

Flash sticks are definitely easier to lose though

Aside from an HDD, I was thinking about buying a 32 gigabyte SD and using that to store my KSP stuff, then when time comes I'll use the SD card for file transfer between this and the new computer.

Now those things are slow and unreliable in my experience..

[cantab]

The only usb flash drives I've had fail have been extremely small and cheap giveaway ones, though I've had some with performance that's pretty pants. I've never permanently lost one either, worst I've done is unintentionally left them at the office, but I can see how they'd be easy to lose. Then again, on the external HDD front the pair of backup drives for the server at the office, that periodically swap between sites, have had no problems either.

As for moving data between two PCs, I'd pick a wired network over a removable drive.

[manatee321]

I have from version .16. And about 2.5 copies for each update, one modded one without. Or the insane number of 7 folders for .24. It all adds up to about 51 gigabytes out of a terabyte or about 1024 megabytes. Yeah it is actually bringing my hard drive to its capacity..........