Hard Drive Partition and FS2002 Performance

[Guest groundpounder75]

Has anyone tried partitioning their hard and installing FS2002 in a different partition? I was wondering if this might increase performance if this were the only the only software installed on the partition.

[Guest outtatimeiii]

Depends on the system. Back when I was using my old K6-400 system (stop laughing LOL) to play FS2002, I put FS2002 on my "faster" 20GB rather than putting it on the noisy, slow 6GB HD. I put faster in quotes because it really didn't load any faster or anything, because that old motherboard did not do anything past ATA/33, and both drives were going the same speed (both drives were on the 1st IDE cable, and it always went the speed of the slower drive). I never tried anything like this on my 1.2GHz Athlon, but I guess it would help out somewhat. Wouldn't really be noticable really, just it might be a bit more efficient because it wouldn't have the OS to contend with while loading.

[Guest HansGroenewold]

Greetings,I purchased a new hard hard, ATA 133, just for use with FS2002. I partitioned it into two drives and FS2002 is the only program on that one new drive. To tell you the truth, there is no noticeable improvement in performance. It may be more efficient and certainly can't hurt, but that's about it. I do use System Suite 4.0 once a week for one stop maintenance,drive error checks, defrag, registry error check, etc.Sincerely,Hans

[Guest]

I was running FS2002 on my Pentium 4 2.0GHz WinXP Pro system with a single 40Gb 7200rpm drive for quite a while with only the one partition and never had any performance issues. After reading some FS2002 performance tips somewhere I gave the multiple partitions configuration a try, 10Gb for the operating system and other non-game applications and the remainder for FS, and noticed no difference at all.Just for the heck of it I added another identical drive and re-installed FS2002 onto that drive with nothing else on that drive and didn't notice anything different.Since my motherboard has on-board ATA RAID I decided to give that a go as I've read in a number of places that using a striped array can improve hard disk access. Again I noticed no difference. The only "benefit" is that I now have a single 80Gb drive and don't have to think about which drive to load this or that program or data onto.My view is that with the performance of current model hard drives on a reasonably recent system it's not worth the effort of changing a happily running setup. It might be a different story if you were running a server with a heavily used database but for Flight Sim use I don't see the advantage of any of the above mentioned configurations over a single drive/single partition setup.RegardsAdrian

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Arthur,I have two HDs in my XP Home based system. (Both IBM Deskstars)The first drive has 2 partitions - a 5Gig partition for XP (C:) and the rest of that HD (D:) is reserved for software (including FS2002) and application installations.The second HD (E:) is reserved for various backups, data, images and software installations that are either used infrequently or are likely to be removed after a trial period. I also use it to install huge ground texture data archives like the VFR Photgraphic Scenery from Just Flight. Also the bulk of XP's Page file is on that same drive and I have redirected most of my software/applications to place temporary files to that drive.To attempt to answer your question, I doubt whether it makes much difference to the performance of FS2002. However, what I do note is that the C and D drives now take much longer to become fragmented than Drive E. Indeed, I only run Norton Speed Disk on the D drive from time to time to ensure large installations like FS2k2 remain contiguous and also to make use of the program's facility whereby it shuffles around your installations to reflect how often each is being used. By that I mean those programs used most frequently are placed on areas of the HD where speed of access is a little faster. But, to be honest, these days the speed of HDs and IDE interfaces are likely to mask these benefits just as the faster CPUs mask the slowdown effects of sloppy programming ;)My second HD (drive E:) is the one that becomes fragmented more quickly and so has Norton's Speed Disk applied more often. This does not seem to affect the Page file however, as Norton's Optimization Map suggests that it is allocated space that is physically remote from the rest of the installations.Hope this helps a little. It's all about speed of access to your data files. The more efficient your setup the faster stuff will load and consequently any pauses during a flight will be less noticeable.Otherwise, performance considerations are down to your MoBo/CPU/GPU/Memory subsystems, your slider settings and 3rd party addons!Mike :-wave

[nigelgrant 4]

I have been trying to post a reply for a couple of days and I think it is working now.I have had partitioned drives for years - FS2002 is on G; all addon scenery is on D; all FS utilities etc are on F. All these partitions are on my second 40Gb drive. My first drive (20Gb)has partition C (Windows98 plus my regular programs); other games and bits and pieces on E; and back-ups on H.Why do I do this? Not for speed but for security.This arrangement allows me to do a clean re-install of Windows on C after doing a format of C; everything else not on C is left unaffected, and I can re-establish connection with FS2002 on G by changing its name then doing a minimum install called FS2002 on G, change the new install's name to something else and rename the original install back to FS2002 then delete the new install. The old FS2002 picks up the registry entries from the subsequent install of FS2002.This arrangement has saved my bacon several times. With today's large hard drives I think it is imperative to have at least two partitions so that important data can be backed-up into the second partition. A bad virus can necessitate re-formating C.NigelVancouver

[Guest groundpounder75]

Thanks for all the replies. I haven't been able to post at this forum for a few days. I don't know why but everytime I would try to login the site wouldn't let me. I couldn't even access the login page. Weird, but now I can. This is good information to have because I was going to go out and buy a second 80G HD and just use it for FS. I thought that having a 8M buffer would help, but I am glad I asked because it saved me some money. I am going to partition my drive and see what happens. Thanks again for all the replies.

[Guest GabrielR]

In theory it should make HD access faster and thus better performance. (I have my 60GB drive with 4 different partions, one only for FS2002). But in real life, I think that If I want a better performing system, my steps would be:1. Updated drivers2. more RAM Power3. New Video card.If that does not work, get yourself a new computer.

[Guest groundpounder75]

Yeah, but my system isn't that bad. Here are the specs...Pentium 4 1.8 GHz80G HD 7200 RPMGeForce 3 Video Card w/ 64M RAM512 RAMMy system runs really sweet. I have all the sliders maxed and I bottom out around 8 to 9 FPS when I am at larger airports like KATL or KLAX with AI traffic at 100%. I am just looking for a way to increase that bottom end of the 8 to 9 FPS to 15 FPS, which is only 5 or 6 more FPS, but I can't seem to do it. I have considered upgrading the video card to the GeForce 4 Ti4600 but can't stomach the price of it right now. I think I am going to sit tight for a while and see what AMD is going to come out with this year and I might make the switch to one of their processors. Not sure. P.S. I also have started playing around with "msconfig" and trying to eleminate a lot of programs from starting up when the computer boots so I can free up more RAM. I am think this might make a difference. I did it on my other computer and it seems to make a slight difference. I know that it boots a bit quicker.

[Guest]

Nothing is going to give you the 5-6 FPS you are looking for except a faster CPU. I'm a diehard AMD fan right now, and think you are right in looking in that direction. While there are some good, economical, choices right now, in a few weeks prices will likely be significantly lower after the Barton release (scheduled for Feb 11, from what I hear).However, switching to AMD will require a new mobo. Make it an nForce2 mobo. That is a killer chipset for the AMD. Oh, and depending on your current mobo, and what you have in RAM now versus what you might want with a new CPU, you may be talking about new RAM, too.It all adds up fast. But bargains abound, and great systems can be put together for minimal bucks. I just completed a $500 upgrade (and $100 of that was just for a premium power supply) that turned my 1.4 Ghz Athlon Tbird into something approaching the performance of a 2.6 Ghz P4. And that also included a new video card.As for hard drive partitioning, I agree with everyone who said it doesn't make any noticeable difference, especially from the FPS point of view.-Basil