Hello.As you can see from my specs, I am currently running two 80GB/7200RPM/8MB Cache Western Digital HD's in RAID 0 config. These are my only drives I have and all other games and Windows are loaded on them.I want to move FS to a dedicated drive. What is faster.2 more 7200's in RAID 0OR1 150 gig 10,000 RPM/16 MB Cache drive.I need more than 75 gig for my fs install and I cant afford two 10,000 RPM drives (well I can if someone thinks it is a must).Any suggestions or other options?

Hmm - You may need to consult with a site like HardOCP or other hardware oriented communities for truly good guidance on this one. (Speculation follows...) I would imagine that your real-world performance would be fairly similar between (2x7600/Raid0) and (1x10000) HD configurations. In some instances, the raid would be faster - like writing video edits or working with very large files. In other cases, the 10,000 RPM drive would be faster - like when working with many smaller files (aka: flight simulator!)Separating the OS from MSFS on two different physical drives will also have a minor benefit for your simming - when the system needs to read some sys-files, it can do so independantly of your "sim" drive, allowing for slightly (*possibly not even visable) improvements.Obviously, if you are running a RAID0 set right now, there's no need to explain the data security risks. :) (I run RAID0 as well, with an external USB2 drive receiving a full copy of all my important data every day... "just in case!") I think your best bet is the single 10,000 - In an app like MSFS where lots of small texture files and config files are being hustled around, faster seek times and large buffers are more important than the increased bandwidth that a RAID installation will provide. As always, hard drives will not effect "IN-GAME" performance of MSFS, only boot and load speeds. -Greg

>As always, hard drives will not effect "IN-GAME" performance>of MSFS, only boot and load speeds. What about the various times during flight that the sim reads aircraft.cgfs and searches for textures and ai aircraft? The drive is never read during play?

>What about the various times during flight that the sim reads>aircraft.cgfs and searches for textures and ai aircraft? The>drive is never read during play?>>Well it is read some during play (you can use filemon.exe to check that), but not nearly to the extent that it is on loading the sim, changing aircraft, etc.Thus hd speed doesn't have as big an effect on in-sim performance as it does on sim load time.Greg's response is a good one. I too would like to see results of benching 2 7200's in RAID0 vs. 1 10,000 rpm drive. I am sure some of the hardware sites have done that comparison.Rhett

That's the thing - I have been using filemon to see what is causing the sim to stutter. No joke, I can be cruising through the thickest AS6 clouds, at a major airport with add on scenery and 100% UT ai and everything is smooth and wonderful. Out of nowhere I get stutters over the ocean with no clouds. That is just an example, stutters occur everywhere but almost never at time when you would think my rig would me really put to the test. There are no similarities between the occurrence except that filemon shows that FS is reading the aircraft cfgs - probably to load more ai aircraft. I want to speed up that process. The HD is the only piece of hardware that I have not replaced in a long time so I thought I would give it a shot.Thanks for the reply.