I'm going to be getting the 10K raptor in the next week or so and will be putting a parition on it to store the pagefile and FSX. My question is what the easiest way to create a parition on the drive? I've seen many posts referring to Parition Magic and how easy is it to use. I also came across this article on the MS support site.http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000/Which method is preferred?Thanks,C.

I have used partition magic for many years, never had a problem. But since they were bought by symantec, I can't tell that anything is being done with the program. I don't think it will work with Vista NTFS partitions. Probably the built-in disk management function in XP is good enough for what you want to do.scott s..

Especially as you appear to be purchasing a new hard-drive on which to store FSX, rather than re-configuring an existing disc if e.g. you have Windows XP Home edition, you should find that the facilities within XP are quite sufficent to your needs without purchasing the Partition Magic Product. Furthermore Partition Magic as far I am aware can only allocate previously existing allocated space to a new or existing parition, it can not create partition space by itself and you have to use the Windows operating system to create useable space in the first place. In windows XP home, if you are creating a patrition or parition [ without also haveing Parition Magic ] try to get the sizes of the partition or partitions right from the get go, unless you are familar with the DOS type instructions as you can create partitions using the Windows XP interface but you have to use the DOS type commands if you wish to expand a previously existing partition [ which is where partition Magic comes in handly ]. Norton Partition Magic is a very nice product and it is particularly good in the sitauation where you have allready allocated the entire space the hard-drive can provide to various partitions and you want to grab space space from several partitions to increase space on a single partition. If you have a 64 bit Windows XP Professional or Vista 64 bit operating system, Partition Magic will not work.Best and Warm RegardsAdrian Wainer

C.,As others have said, Windows will do what you want. As to PartitionMagic, I used it on Win 9.x boxes for years with no problems. I bought v8.0 last November. It barely functioned on 2 different XP Pro SP2 boxes, and repeatedly crashed *while* partitioning. That was ~US$90.00 w/CD shipping down the drain. As usual, anything Symantec touches turns to, hmmm, well, you get my meaning. jb[a href=http://exmixer.com/]Windows utility links/FS 2004[/a]

Thanks for the updates, very helpful.I will try using XP to create the parition and see what trouble I can get myself into.Regards,C.

Here's a quick and easy explanation for you so you feel confident in the procedure. It's very simple and no software needs to be purchased. Just plug your new hard drive into an existing SATA port and look over this article: http://www.d-silence.com/feature.php?id=246Regards, Jim

If I may expand on this...The OP is contemplating the swap and FS on the same drive. Any comments on this? Curious what others think.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

Rhett,>>...The OP is contemplating the swap and FS on the same drive. Any comments on this?<. Leaving aside the question as to whether putting the page/swap file on a seperate drive actually improves performance for anything...Putting a disk and CPU intensive app like FS and the swap on the same drive doesn't make much sense to me. With 3 drives, I'd say put the swap on one, FS on another, see if it improves performance. My experience in the past has been 'not really', as regards the swap file. Myself, I have FS9 and the addons, and FSX on seperate drives. Not sure that even makes that much of a difference...still CPU bound, though FS9 runs like it should on the X6800/8800GTX Falcon box :-). My $0.02 jb[a href=http://exmixer.com/]Windows utility links/FS 2004[/a]

Putting the swap file on a separate HD under it's own parition should improve performance especially if it's the first partition on the drive. The link below explained the benefit of doing that. Putting FSX on the second parition of that drive with a defrag utility like Ulitmate Defrag, or O&O shouldn't hurt performane. I'll find out and can always move the swap file back.http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=143Regards,Chris

My thought (just a *thought* for discussion purposes) is that having the swap AND fs on the same physical hard drive is not the way to go.Rationale: FS (particularly FSX) is far and away more disk intensive than your OS is. (is that debateable?). FS is your most disk-intensive app. If your goal is to optimize FS performance, it seems logical to get the swap AWAY from FS. Not the other way around. If that means put the swap on C:, then so be it.I know what they say about putting the swap on a separate phys drive from the OS. -- and that is valid and sound advice EXCEPT in our specific situation. In our special case, we want to optimize our #1 app (FS) above all other things, and that includes the OS, which is less demanding than our sim is. So I would venture to say, that if you want to optimize a specific app, it's best to put the swap on a separate physical drive from your most disk-intensive application, if you choose to optimize that app vs. OS load speed.Anyway the above is a theory that I hazard upon you all. I don't proclaim it to be correct, but merely a point of discussion. Perhaps separating OS from swap is ALWAYS a good idea no matter what. At any rate it's a small difference in perf anyway.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

Hi,I set up FSX on a dedicated RAID 0. It had always been my intention to put the page file on the same drive, so I created a primary partition for it on the RAID 0 before installing FSX.I ran with the page file on the same single drive as the OS for a while, then changed it over to its dedicated partition on the RAID 0 drive that has FSX.I noticed no difference in performance, but would say that both worked well. The good thing with the page file in a simple partition at the front of my RAID 0 array is it is easy to defrag and mess with where it is now.I suppose I could also try another drive that has no OS and no FSX but I figured the RAID 0 was the best bet over the OS single drive.