Hi all, I have a fast system, but I feel my current Hard Drive could be better (300Gig SataII 16 meg cache).Whats the best way, OS on 1 hard drive and FSX on another?Also whats the best drives to get (fastest)?

The best way to go is OS on one drive and FSX on its OWN dedicated drive. The fastest hard drive that you can currently get is the Western Digital Raptor.

Well the latest Seagates with the 32mb cache are nearly as fast as the Raptors now. So you could go with one of those. Or a single raptor 150GBhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148274http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136012And actually, having OS and FSX on the same physical drive is better, I was told by FS-GS.

I tried it both ways...One drive is 250 sata One drive is 150 Raptor @10,000Now my OS sits on the 250 slower drive and FSX sits on the Raptor...On my system I really can't tell the difference yet...but as the addons pile up it will probably prove to be the best set up.... Plus I have a nVidia 780i Core 2 Quad (nForce 780i SLI) MoBo and a quad core CPU overclocked.....So that helps....In short...Yes..Put FSX alone on fastest drive......Can't hurt....

Interesting that FS-GS recommends OS and FSX on same drive. It would be interesting to hear their rationale behind this, which I'm sure they have thought out well. Possibly some slight speed advantage with the C:DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS.....FSX (saved flights, etc.) folder. But other than that, I can't see any logical reason why co-locating them on the same physical hard disk would be faster.Seems FS-GS likes to go for the least complex procedure...which is sometimes a good thing I know. For example, they also recommend not ever changing the default flight (Friday Harbor for the U.S. version of FSX). Thats a "safe" procedure to be sure especially in light of add-ons.I recommend two separate physical drives...one for OS, and one for FS. two read heads, one for OS disk access, and another for FSX disk access, seems better than one head, trying to handle both simultaneously.I'd put FSX on the fastest drive. It's more important than our OS'es :)RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

Hey Ryan!!! I hope all is well with you, long time no talk.Actually those Seagate even with the larger cache still get crushed by the newer SATA3 WD Caviar 7200RPM drives and the original SATA 10k Raptors.I would go with a WD Caviar SATA3 drive...-PaulPrimary RigLiquid CooledIntel C2D E6600 @3.8gigsAsus P5N32SLI-Plus2 gigs Corsair XMS PC6400 4 4 4 12 @936Dual OC'd XFX 8800GTX @ 2 gigs24 inch Widescreen LCD 16XAA/16XAFDual 19 inch LCD'sRaid-0+1PCPower and Cooling 1k Quad SLIhttp://home.comcast.net/~psolk/3monitorsa.htmlBackup RigAMD 4000 San Diego @ 2.72 Gigs Kingston Corsair XMS CL2XFX 7900 GTX Raid-0