Hard Drives

[Bluescaster 21]

Hi All, I wonder if anyone could give me some advice.For several years I've used a separate Hard Drive for my Flight Sim programs - using the other drive for the operating system and everything else. (A tip I read about here a long time ago)My system is a few years old now and no doubt the HDD is slow by comparison to the newer ones. I have recently seen adverts for these new fangled "External" hard drives that are just plug-in. I wondered; If they would be suitable to transfer my Flight Sim programs onto. If they would work; If they might be an improvement etc. My Hard drives are both connected via the old "Tape" type leads and therefore I believe, not 'SATA' or 'RAID' drives/connected. (I confess to not really knowing what these terms mean, but want to explain what type of drives I have.)Thanks for reading this far - any help will be appreciated.Regards,Blue

[greggerm 312]

Hard drive advice day! :) It's always nice to run MSFS on its own independent disk drive - it helps with performance and organization, and makes things nice and easy. You are using ye' olde ATA drives, the precursor to SATA. I are still making them, so you aren't out of luck. A new drive will likely be quicker and more spacious than what you have now. Ideally speaking, you could do a 1:1 swap of the old flightsim drive for a new one, and just roll with that. You will ONLY notice an improvement in simulator loading time, and likely a small one at that. With that said, if you have enough space for your needs, I'd suggest sticking right where you are. Do you defrag your system on a regular basis? Performing an organized defrag run is a great way to improve loading speeds with MSFS, especially if you haven't done one in a while. Payware options that get good reviews: UltimateDefrag, OO DefragFreeware: JKDefrag, running the "-a 7" sort switch (eg: jkdefrag -a 7 d:) --where d: is the drive you have MSFS installed As mentioned in another thread, external USB2 drives aren't really suitable for MSFS use - they are fantastic for storage and archiving, and even some everyday use, but they aren't too strong for gaming. You could do it, but it's generally not advised. One could say that is the cost of the easy plug-and-play feature of a portable. Good luck!-Greg

[Bluescaster 21]

Hi Greg, Merry Christmas! - and many thanks for taking the trouble to reply to my post.I do defrag regularly and use Ultimate Defrag which I find straightforward and easy to use. In light of your observations I will probably stick with my present set up then ;-)I thought that a new, more modern hard drive might allow my scenery to load quicker - sometimes it remains blurred for a few seconds before giving a clear picture - I assumed that was the scenery not loading quickly enough; and that it might be improved by a new modern drive. You suggest not - oh well! Not to worry - my system, although old is well tuned and I'm happy with it.Indeed just recently I've loaded FSX - and it even runs that!! Much to my surprise.Thanks again for your help and advice - Happy New Year to you.Regards, Blue.My system BTW = System Details:Asus A7N8X-E Motherboard. AMD Athlon 3200+ CPU. 2X HDD. Maxtor 6Y080L0 & SanDisk Cruzer Micro USB ST380011A - NOT SATA (1 for FS, 1 for O.S etc.) Windows XP Home + SP3. Nvidia 7800GS+ (AGP) Card. 512MBCRT Monitor "LG Flatron ez T910BU" - 1280X1024.@75HzRAM OCZ PC3200 3GB - (3X 1GB)DDR Platinum. mXTC CAS2.Current VGA Drivers: 169.21570W Pro Dual fan PSU

[olivermbs 0]

I personally use a 70Gb Digital-Western HD (high speed) just for FS. Everything else is distributed amongst one 300Gb SATA drive, one 190Gb SATA drive and a 1TB external HD. I think the external hard drive is great, the speeds are the same as the other 2 SATA drivers and it works fine in NTFS. Still, probally better not to put FS on it as mentioned by Greg, but all in all a good HD for films, applications etc

[Bluescaster 21]

Thanks for your advice Oliver. Most interesting.Happy New Year. Regards Blue

[JimmiG 244]

Used to have a separate drive for FS but I've been running it from the main 640GB drive for a long time now. Works great. As long as you've got 4GB of RAM (XP users can probably get away with 2-3GB) and defrag regularly (Vista takes care of that automatically), performance doesn't seem to be affected at all. The only time multiple drives might be useful is when using old FS9-style photo sceneries made up of thousands of tiny files, IMO.

[C09G 0]

What I've experience is the Raptor Drive by Western Digital.The faster the RPM of a hard drive can boost up your timing for FSX to load.-Vincent

[Plainplane 6]

Bluescaster,I did a search on your motherboard and according to the ASUS website, you have two SATA ports, using the older SATA I (1.5Gb/s) specification. It is still an improvement over the PATA setup you are using. Many newer SATA hard drives have backwards compatibility for the older specification and you would get better loading times than you currently have with a SATA drive.The only good external hard drives that could be used for FS are E-SATA drives, which have the same speed capabilities as standard internal SATA drives. A majority of motherboards do not support E-SATA, but there are E-SATA cards available for your PCI slot.In my system, I have a 300GB WD Velociraptor that I am going to only use for FSX.

[scott967 62]

Or if you have $500 US to burn, get an Intel X25M SSD. (Hopefully the prices will come down in 09).scott s..