Press ALT and hold it until the toolbar disappears :-)RaymondNorway

Thanks for the Great guide. I have a suggestion regarding defrag. After install of FSX on my system:3.2GB HT P42GB 533MHz DDR2Radeon X1900 AIW (256MB)Windows XP Pro SP2The disappointment with stuttering and freeze frame was palpable and I was glad I did not uninstall FS9. I too have been a big fan of PerfectDisk for the last 3 years however, its inability to place files specifically has been a limitation for me. I recently have been awed by the abilities of a brand new utility called UltimateDefrag from DiskTrix. In fact it is specifically designed to get the absolute best performance possible from your HDD for FSX/FS9 etc. Initially its not as set and forget as the others you mention but wow what a difference it made. After placing my FSX files at the outer (faster) part of my disk I can run FSX with no problem.. with all the default setting which on my system are high with the exception of aircraft which is ultrahigh!Looks fantastic and my frame rates are back up around 18-22.

Psybear, (please sign your posts with your real name)I've heard some really bad things about that program from other people in the FS community... one said it tried to move NTFS formatting related files that aren't supposed to be moved and screwed up the drive etc. Perfect Disk conforms to the MS specification as far as the formatting, RAID disks and other such things...There's a white paper that Raxco wrote that explains why they don't have an option for placing certain files at the start of the drive. What actually matters is that files that load one after another are placed sequentially on the disk, not where that group actually is on the disk. Yes, it's true that the outer portion of the disk has a higher rotational speed than the inside of the disk, but they found that the disk is already spinning so fast as to make any sort of performance gain from that negligible. They determined that in many cases, it's largely a placebo effect where people just perceive that the computer is faster after placing certain files at the end of the drive because that's what they're expecting and anticipating. Actual measurements of load times didn't bear this out or were more properly explained by the files being sequential so that the read head didn't need to jump across the drive to find the next file. Perfect Disk is aware of which files are read sequentially most often by Windows (it's actually logged) and it does takes this into account if you're using the smart placement mode.

Hi Ryan,What you say is interesting and I will attempt to get an impartial opinion. But I won't abandon a new program that appears to be working fantastically based on a white paper written by a company that has a vested interest in the outcome.PerfectDisk is an excellent defrag for what it is designed for. I will just reiterate that FSX runs faster after I use UltimateDefrag.Until then all I can tell you as a user of PerfectDisk for 3 years is that I've been using UltimateDefrag for over a month now and so far have experienced no problems whatsoever. In fact the read speed is faster than ever as measured by PC Pitsop.Its possible people were using a beta as the 1st full release just came out about a week ago. Also it is a bit more complicated to set up properly. Anyway, they have a free trial so...thanks for the heads up and I'll post back if anything weird happens.Clay

Clay,I didn't realize it was a beta that others were using... it was definitely a few months ago when I saw that post here, so evidently it was the beta.Maybe I'll dl and give it a shot...

Hey guys, I myself have the Ultimate Defrag. I haven't had any problems except that I think I myself set it up wrong.And it coincidentally is made by the same guy that runs PCAviator.

Data does not go onto or come off a hard-drive any faster because it is written on the outside cylinders. The electronics feeding or receiving the data stream does not care where the data is written. As a result, the only thing that happens is that data written on the outer rings is written less densely (bigger magnetic spots on the platter) because the actual disc traveled farther during the write cycle. Same thing happens on the read cycles. That's why hard-drives are rated at fixed maximum transfer rates. So, where the utility places the data (inside or outside cylinders) is irrelevant. All those others factors do come into play though such as contiguous file placement, files used together being placed on near cylinder to the others, etc.Tom Bernard

It's called data access...you could look it up; and the data bus is another topic altogether. Anyway my intention is not to debate individual theories but rather to suggest UltimateDefrag as a way to help people struggling with getting FSX to increase performance... as it has for me and my system. Believe what you want to believe. It's just a suggestion.Clay