I currently have 4 SATA harddrives in my PC.These are all partitioned. I have 4 XP and various backup/ghost partitions.What I want to do is to use 2 of these drives purely for FS.Both drives partitioned into 2 like so.Drive 1 - c: XP installed for FS2004 d: XP installed for FSXDrive 2 - e: FS2004 install f: FSX installDoes this look efficient? Would there be any benefit over having FS2004 installed completely with XP on 1 partion on a drive?ThanksGraham

Would there be any benefit over>having FS2004 installed completely with XP on 1 partion on a>drive?No, that would be a drawback.Why install XP twice for FS9 and FSX? System is hardly different if you are using the same one. I have it like this:Drive 1: XPDrive 2: FS9 and FSX on separate partitionsDrive 3: SwapOf course, not all of these paritions take up whole drives, I have other stuff/files installed beside it, but those are on separate partitions.The point is, FS9 and FSX are never running at the same time, hence same drive. Important thing, XP and Swap and FS to be separated, cuz all three need pretty much disk time.

>Drive 1 - c: XP installed for FS2004.... d: XP installed for FSXWhy would you install XP twice for 2 different MSFS products? its redundant and uselessI would install XP to a single drive and then to ensure the highest geometric/access performance curve possible and plenty of room to expand and add things.. 1 drive for FSX and 1 drive for FS9 with NO PARTITIONSThe single XP install will run both just fineThat leaves your 3rd drive for storage and backup.. or if you feel like playing with another OS, Vista

>I would install XP to a single drive and then to ensure the>highest geometric/access performance curve possible and plenty>of room to expand and add things.. 1 drive for FSX and 1 drive>for FS9 with NO PARTITIONSIMHO, this is a waste of space. Today's drives are what, 500GB usually? Using the WHOLE 500GB for a FS that uses in best case around 100GB? I find that a bit ludicrous... usual sizes are about 50-70GB (as compared about a year ago, in some posts).

double post... forum software glitch

Since he never identified the drives I have no way of making that assessmenthe asked for the best and I gave it to him based on the information provided.And regardless of what you incorrectly think, the performance even on the larger platter, is better when laid out without partitions and correctly defragged. The less data on that drive, the faster it will be. I would rather have 180GB of FSX/addons with 320GB of free space than 100 of FSX with 20-40GB of free spaceIf I wanted other storage I would name a folder on the root in such a way it would place it on the drive as the last folder in alphanumerical order, then name defrag it so the data was stored at the end of the FSX install, effectively keeping the FSX data in the performance zone for access... and use no partitions

Thanks for the advice guysHere is a screenshot of my current partitionsSo you reckon I use 1 drive for FS2004, 1 drive for FSX, 1 drive with XP purely for FS and the 4th drive for backups and the like?Thanks