MSFS 2024 in an external SSD drive

Yes, absolutely. My old PC had it installed on an external SSD. No issues. Just needs to be formatted to NTFS and you're good to go.

because of their higher prices I would only be able to afford a small (256GB) SSD drive

Hi

Don't be fooled into buying an external SSD, most are far too expensive for what they are. I'm not saying not to buy an SSD though.

The cheapest option is to make your own. All you need is a standard 2.5" SSD and an external USB 3.0 drive enclosure. SSD's on their own work out a lot cheaper and a Drive enclosure costs only $10. External SSD use the same tech, just in a glued together
case.

It's not complicated either. Putting an SSD hard drive in an enclosure is as easy as changing batteries in a TV remote.

My external SSD is a 2.5" Corsair MX500 SSD drive.

Thanks. It appears the SSD external drive number 2 was the issue. Maybe!

That narrows it down to 3 issues.

Bad USB SSD Docking cable

Bad SSD

XBOX S does not play well with 2 external SSD drives

Sometimes when a drive starts to fail it will do strange things .

last one that failed had a bad cable as well as a bad drive. Difficult to troubleshoot eh.

Just like to add, unless your external drive is an SSD, don't bother. This game NEEDS an SSD, it will be unplayable on a mechanical hard drive.

There is an improvement when using SSD drives especially in games where the load times are already long (GTA5, The Witcher 3 etc). If I were buying an external drive, I would go SSD over a normal external hard drive not just for this generation but to ensure
it lasts well into the next gen. There are loads of tests carried out by external organisations like Digital Foundry that show benefits of SSD drives.

With installed games, you would still need the disc if it was a physical purchase or the account you used to purchase the game to play whatever was on the SSD.