I have two IDE drives on a Asus A8V Deluxe mb. One 60 Gb Maxtor bought in 2002. On this drive I have Win XP installed. Then I got one 250 Gb seagate baracuda 7200.10 bought previous year. Here I have FS2004 and games and some other stuff. My motherboars has two IDE controllers one VIA and one promise. I have the maxtor on the VIA and the seagate on the promise controller (i.e not on the same cable).My question could there be any benefit in changing this setup? For example I have learnt that it would be an advantage to have FS and OS on the same drive. Also that the OS should be on the fastest drive. I wonder is there reason to think that my latest seagate is faster than the five year older maxtor?I have the distinct feeling that harddrive access is rather slow. It is slower now compared to when I tried using two SATA drives in raid 0 setup.On the other hand is it worth all the work to reinstall everything?

Getting re-set onto the newer seagate is a good idea. You won't gain anything for FS (cuz it's already on the fast drive), but the rest will feel like you are running a new computer. You'll get 2-3X faster everything ('cept FS). Reload FS onto the boot seagate and defrag with Ultimate or O&O with FS moved to the outer edge. Use the Maxtor for misc storage.Go for it.

>Getting re-set onto the newer seagate is a good idea. >>You won't gain anything for FS (cuz it's already on the fast>drive), but the rest will feel like you are running a new>computer. You'll get 2-3X faster everything ('cept FS). ReloadHow can it possible be such a big gain as 2-3X? i might also point out that both harddrives has a stated accesstime of 8.5 mS.>FS onto the boot seagate and defrag with Ultimate or O&O withDo you mean Ultimate Defrag 2008? If so I have an offer from PC aviator to buy it for $30 + a giftcertificate of $20 to which I have to comply latest 18 July. But isn't there a FSX thread about this sw causing a lot of problem and not working well (Ultimate Defrag Yes or No?)

Hi,Any defrag software will be good.The best is the free one builtin Windows OS as it is free :)If you want nice GUI and some (many useless) options you can spend some dollars on paywares defrag proggies.As already stated in a other post in the FS2004 forum .. most of peoples are waiting miracles from defrag ..That's a myth .. and I name this a "placebo effect" ... cause it's will be not a improvement for the run of FS2004 in a practical way.So maybe some milliseconds difference when loading FS2004 but not a FPS more when running :)For try to improve you simming experience .. try all the tweaks well know and posted ad nuseam on those forums ... or increase your CPU power .....Defrag is not at my opinion a tweak for improve FS2004.Cheers.

Harddrives are really coming along. Early 2000 drives were still in the 20-30MB/s transfer rate range. Now, they are running between 70 and 110. For instance, I have a 3 drive raid of 7200s that run at ~ 300MB/s. Access times are important, but not the whole story. I've been using Ultimate Defrag for several years. No problems. Really hard to say what kind of mischief the others might be getting into.

>Hi,>>Any defrag software will be good.>The best is the free one builtin Windows OS as it is free :)And it almost always tell me no defrag is nevessary and when it is I don't notice any difference.>So maybe some milliseconds difference when loading FS2004 but>not a FPS more when running :)Actually I saw a test of it here at Avsim suggesting 10s of seconds.>For try to improve you simming experience .. try all the>tweaks well know and posted ad nuseam on those forums ... or>increase your CPU power .....>Defrag is not at my opinion a tweak for improve FS2004.>I have taken the FS-GS service a couple of years ago so I think I already have the system as optimised as possible.That guy also told me that my system is limited by the videocard and not the CPU.

>Harddrives are really coming along. Early 2000 drives were>still in the 20-30MB/s transfer rate range. Now, they are>running between 70 and 110. For instance, I have a 3 drive>raid of 7200s that run at ~ 300MB/s. Access times are>important, but not the whole story. >Both my harddrives are 7200 rpm.