Decided to post these results as a new topic because it got buried in the previous USB highspeed drive topic: This was a suggestion by Soarpics to try HDTACH to determine efficiency of USB external harddisk with FS9:Thanks Greg for the link. Here is the Quick Bench result: (both tests were performed with identical systems running and no programs running:My: C drive (20 gig WD Caviar)BURST: 92.1 MB/SRANDOM ACCESS: 17.8 MB/SAVERAGE READ: 25.3 MB/SCPU USAGE: 2%USB EXTERNAL WD 80 GIG: BURST: 21.9 MB/S (big difference there!)RANDOM ACCESS: 15.1 MB/SAVERAGE READ: 21.3 MB/SCPU USAGE: 5%Obviously the performance of the internal HD is better than the external USB harddrive. Which means,I think, that although I am experiencing better performance with the FS9 on USB it must be because of some other factor with the FS9 install on the internal drive. Defragging: I Defragged both drives, the internal 3 times in a row and the USB drive only once after FS9 installation. It is a clean partition with only FS9 on it.I'm not knowledgeable about the benchmark terminology at all and only report here what HDTACH reported. But, I can surmise that if all things were equal, the USB would not perform like the internal drive should. The USB does great as long as I do not throw more than 1/8 cloud coverage in. If I do, it really bogs down - especially with cumulus.Since I obtained the above HDTACH results, I switched my USB drive with a second drive I had internally, making that one the USB drive.I then fired up FS9 and had essentially the same performance (FPS with 1/8 clouds) and all other settings the same. When I introduced greater cloud coverage and higher autogen and scenery complexity I was still able to maintain acceptable performance, which was not the case with the USB setup. So, for someone with a moderate system and not a need for high eyecandy settings a highspeed USB drive could be an answer if the internal disk slots are taken. It does work and very well considering the limitations. Thanks again, Greg for the link to HDTACH- If I hadn't seen this, I would still have FS9 on the USB without the eyecandy!LeafhopperDave S.

I'm getting 49.1MB/sec with my Maxtor drive and 41.1MB/s with my older Western Digital drive.They're both quite old, normal 7200 RPM/8MB drives, 160GB and 120GB respectively. At least your results show very low CPU usage for the USB drive which is good.Given those results, a USB drive is really only good for storage/archiving purposes. I'm thinking about buying a 250GB version myslef for that purpose - "only" 280GB is not really enough as I constantly have to delete stuff to make room for something else :-lol

Finally some solid data .. thanks.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

Thanks for the data- Although this is what I stated, I realize that's in not only unrealistic but also foolish for intelligent people to believe everything they read on the internet :)That 21 megs is quite low nowadays though- you could upgrade that sucker for cheap OR there is another way :)Take the drive out of the external device, and swap it with your current drive. It should work just fine- at least you won't fry anything trying it. I'm sure the newer drive in the external is significantly faster.

Hi Dave,Thanks for the benchmarks. By way of comparison here are the numbers for the drive in my sig:READ BURST: 113.8 msRANDOM ACCESS: 8 msAVRAGE READ: 64.4MB/sCPU USAGE: 24.1%The drive has 3 partitions with Windows on C:, MSFS in D:, and the Page File on E:. Your numbers above show much lower CPU Usage than mine, which will have an impact on performance. Clearly, your drive speeds are not what is making the sim perform better for you... so one would naturally then look at how your new config changed the way data is moved. While I've had no problems with the sim I believe I'll be installing my old 37GB Raptor with it's larger sibling and then reconfigure the entire system. More info here when I'm done (could be 2-3 weeks before I can get to it).Thanks,Greg

Hi Greg, hope all is well with you. I've tested various HD setups which included something like yours. My comparisons showed and hence IMHO, it's best to put the full Houdini in one partition and in their default directories. I.e. the pagefile on a latter (=slower) HD-sector, seems detrimental to system performance. Having put everything into 1 partition (with 1 HD), I equally noticed a benefit by compressing the drive for the first time. MS' recommendations (look-up 'Pagefile' in the OS' help section if you like) are quite explicit on this, but nevertheless a little vague. I'm pretty sure, this 1-partition business is also what ef-es-gee-ess recommends. Out of curiousity, if you put your pagefile on C, does the CPU usage decrease? Cheers, good luck and kind regards Jaap

H Jaap,I've been well, though a bit sore after a long weekend of skiiing with the family (they're young... and I'm not :( )."Out of curiousity, if you put your pagefile on C, does the CPU usage decrease?"No. This high CPU usage started after installing SP2 (as I use Mozilla/Thunderbird and have a router here I may forego SP2 in the reinstall). Before installing SP2 I saw 7%-12% usage in HDTach.Here's the plan... I'll reformat the 74Gb with a small partition for the OS and the remaining for games. On the 37Gb drive I'll make a 5Gb (approximately 2X what I need but I have plenty of space on the second drive) partition for the Page File and the remaining for all my other apps.Your input appreciated.Be well,Greg

Hi Greg,Here are my results:Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 (160GB) 8MB 7200rpm ATA 100 (UDMA Mode 5)2 partitions: O/S and pagefile on 10 Gig and the rest for programs, including >25 gigs of FS9 related stuff.READ BURST: 84.3 MB/sRANDOM ACCESS: 12.5 msAVERAGE READ: 49.1 MB/sCPU USAGE: 18% (+/- 2%)I had the same experience with FS-GS. Michael expressed strong reservations about partitioning the drive and preferred everything to be on one huge partition. Rightly or wrongly I resisted as it seem somehow more convenient and safer(?) to have the o/s on its own partition. It also makes for quicker tidy and maintenance operations on the C: drive. I did make one concession, however, and agreed to move the page file from a second drive to the C: drive. Perfect Disk takes care of any fragmentation and I am not aware of any significant performance issues. Having the o/s on its own small partition does create one problem for the user: you really need to change the paths for folder destinations demanded by so many applications when saving data, temporary or otherwise, to avoid clutter and filling up of the C: drive. Small price to pay, IMHO but I expect it's all mostly psychological :(All the very best for the coming New Year!Regards,Mike

Hi everybody, here are some results using HDTach v.3.0.1.0 and win2000sp4. Testing method: All P-ATA HDs as secondary on IDE-0 with the pagefile on the master disk. If results were consistant, tests were repeated 7 times per HD. 74GB WD Raptor S-ATA(10k/8MB): 8.4ms, 4%, avge 64.9MB, burst 121MB123GB Hitachi P-ATA(7200/8MB): 12.3ms, 2%, avge 49.2, burst 97.8MB80GB Maxtor P-ATA(7200/8MB): 13.7ms, 2%, avge 49MB, burst 94.8MB80GB WD (JB) P-ATA(7200/8MB): 13.4ms, 2%, avge 41.1MB, burst 94MB80GB Hitachi P-ATA(7200/1.7MB): 13.1ms, 0%, avge 48.7MB, burst 72.2MB80GB Seagate P-ATA (7200/2MB): 15ms, 2%, avge 46.9MB, burst 92.9MB40GB WD P-ATA (5400/2MB): 18.1ms, 2%, avge 33.1MB, burst 94MB (!)Notes: - The 80GB-Maxtor was pretty inconsistant with average seek times from 13.6-14.5ms. Neglecting the first two measurements per series, 13.7ms was the average for the remaining 5 runs. - The 80GB Hitachi came back with 0% 4 times --> 0%Further notes: I'm convinced, Michael of ef-es-gee-es knows exactly what he's talking about. After all and AFAIK, there are at least two winXP functions which rely on the C-partition. 1st, the 'MFT' which 'uses' the amount of free space on 'C' and 2nd, the file optimizing functions XP has onboard. Here's my HD-breakdown FYI: HD1-C: OS and FS (80GB partition) HD2-D: 10GB partition for the (tiny) pagefile HD2-E: Backup (rest of drive) Optional(not in use now), HD3-F: Mapped to 'C' as 'Scenery' and 'Texture' folders. All drives are 123GB Hitachis. My FS/OS is ca. 24GBs (incl. FS Global) and excluding the backups. Hope this is slightly informative, good luck and kind regards Jaap PS: I tried HDTach v.2.x as well but found it less consistant than v.3.0.1

Those Raptor drives look more and more tempting. Screaming fast. It's a shame they're not available in bigger versions like 120GB since 70GB is really only enough for only the most frequently used games and programs.Multiple partitions is definitely the way to go. Last time I reformatted I didn't even have to re-install most of my sceneries (~25GB total) since I had them on their own partition - I just added them in the scenery.cfg again. With one big partition on a 100+GB drive defragging takes forever and if you get some severe error it takes everything with it in the fall including irreplacable personal files.