Fs On A External Harddisk

[Guest blazer1234]

Hello everyone,I just bought an external hard disk with USB2.0.The question that came along was:Is it recommended or useful that I put my flightsim (fs2004) and add ons on this Harddisk,instead on the usually C-drive?Does it bring some improvements and does the USB connected harddrive bring enough speed for playing FS Thanks for the eventually answers and an happy last month of this year.GrAndr

[scott967 62]

I think USB might be a bit slow. You might want to benchmark your external hd to see how it compares to your internal drive. On one of my systems I found firewire was much faster than USB, but on my current system firewire is messed up and I have to use USB, still too slow though in my estimation.This is probably better addressed on the hardware forum, where there are more gear-heads.scott s..

[RFields5421 1]

I have found USB and Firewire external hard drives to both be significantly, noticably, slower than an internal hard drive.The USB 2.0 interface throughput is up to 480Mbps - Mega Bits per second - which is 60 MBps - Mega Bytes per secondFirewire newest interface can be up to 800 Mbps - 100 MBps - though 1/3 to 1/2 that is more commonIDE hard drives can be up to 133 MBpsSATA drives can be up to 6Gbps - 750 MBps.Almost no drives can achieve the maximum throughput. Hard drive speed and read / write times will almost always limit the drive throughput to about half the interface maximum capability. Hopefully you have 7,200 RPM hard drives, better yet, 10,000 RPM hard drives in your computer.Most external drives are 5,400 RPM or slower.External SATA hard drives can achieve 120MBps in real use - which is double the USB maximum, though USB 2.0's achievable throughput is normally limited to 240-280 Mbps - or about 30-35 MBpsThat said - I have used FS2004 on an external hard drive and achieve flyable results on a laptop.I find turning down AI and scenery complexity levels to near minimums has a greater positive impact on FPS with an external hard drive than it does with an internal driver.I have also run FS from a 16GB USB Flash Drive - and find it much worse than an external hard drive. Most Flash Drives have really poor write times compared to hard drives.We bought about 50 Lenovo ThinkPad computers with solid state hard drives, and most of the executives who got them are complaining about how slow they are compared to their old laptops with 7,200 rpm hard drives. Though they do like the lower weight, the faster boot up and much lower heat output.

[Guest blazer1234]

Thanks for the reply both of youSo that's a no no than for that plan.RegardsAndr

[Echofox 3]

Hi AndreI have FS9 on a 250Gb external drive, plus a library of folders with downloads and add-ons etc. My computer is an off the shelf HP7655 Media with no tweaks or extras to make it run faster, and I don't have any trouble 95% of the time with slow running either on the ground or in the air. I have UT, Fscene, airports full of AI aircraft, and a lot flying around. Sometimes an add-on airport may have too much to handle, but usually the creator will tell you what to delete to help speed things up a bit. On the whole, no real problems. However I do use PCTools Decktop Maestro every day to clean the registry etc ( there are other programs) andI believe this does make a difference, also keeping drivers updated and a weekly defrag of the C drive. I don't advise running FSX on an external, I have FSX but got so fed up with it I uninstalled it. Stick with FS9 and all the clever guys who make for a great sim. Sorry to add to your confusion.Regards, Echofox