Hi , having assembled my new components, I am ready to install and would like some advice. My proposed set up will be as follows:2 x 300GB raptors ( possibly in RAID0, but not if there is no advantage) controlled by areac 1210 controller card for storage of photoscenery1 x 150GB raptor controlled by Areca card, for my FSX installation1 X 1TB western digital drive controlled by Areca card, for overflow and general storage such as music etc1 x OCZ vertex 60GB SSD on the motherboard sata with my operating system on, NCQ enabled ( This is so that I can take advantage of using SSD, correct? )Do I have the above planned correctly? By using a separate card controller, can I reap maximum benefit from my SSD by enabling NCQ on the motherboard ( where it was going to be installed to ) and having the other drives AHCI enabled via the card ( Have I got this right? I have very little understanding of this, just what I have read from various threads relating to this) I have read through this: http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=28350 post and intended to follow the advice there regarding cluster sizing and formatting. Is there anything else I need to look out for ? Am I going to run into problems with drive letters and booting ? Secondly, regarding transferring my existing installation of windows and FSX:I have O&O disk image pro ( not the very latest version that has just come out this week)I had planned to make an image of my windows install and install onto my new SSD. Likewise with my FSX install ( I have the registry fix programme for FSX as wee to help with this) Can you see any potentail problems here? Or would you advise a complete re installation of both windows and FSX. ( Both installs are only a few months old and currently seem to be working just fine....) Thanks for any input from you all.Mark

The only thing I see missing is a data back-up strategy. I would add to your list at least a 1TB external eSATA drive for partition back-ups and to keep off line.I would also opt for a clean install of both operating system and FSX. However, I usually rename my aircraft and scenery folders to something like aircraft.MOD and then do the install. That way I can easily drop those folders back in (or files of them) rather than re-installing every aircraft and scenery add-on. Works for me.

Thx buddy, I already have the scenery and planes covered, I have installed all my scenery to a separate drive and copied my sim objects folder. You are right though, they are so cheap, a 1TB external would be a good safety policy. Thx for the input. Mark

Hi , having assembled my new components, I am ready to install and would like some advice. My proposed set up will be as follows:2 x 300GB raptors ( possibly in RAID0, but not if there is no advantage) controlled by areac 1210 controller card for storage of photoscenery1 x 150GB raptor controlled by Areca card, for my FSX installation1 X 1TB western digital drive controlled by Areca card, for overflow and general storage such as music etc1 x OCZ vertex 60GB SSD on the motherboard sata with my operating system on, NCQ enabled ( This is so that I can take advantage of using SSD, correct? )Do I have the above planned correctly? By using a separate card controller, can I reap maximum benefit from my SSD by enabling NCQ on the motherboard ( where it was going to be installed to ) and having the other drives AHCI enabled via the card ( Have I got this right? I have very little understanding of this, just what I have read from various threads relating to this) I have read through this: http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=28350 post and intended to follow the advice there regarding cluster sizing and formatting. Is there anything else I need to look out for ? Am I going to run into problems with drive letters and booting ? Secondly, regarding transferring my existing installation of windows and FSX:I have O&O disk image pro ( not the very latest version that has just come out this week)I had planned to make an image of my windows install and install onto my new SSD. Likewise with my FSX install ( I have the registry fix programme for FSX as wee to help with this) Can you see any potentail problems here? Or would you advise a complete re installation of both windows and FSX. ( Both installs are only a few months old and currently seem to be working just fine....) Thanks for any input from you all.Mark

Mark; You don't want to use AHCI with the other drives...it'll slow things down considerably. It's designed to optimize disk head travel in a disk system that gets lots of concurrent thrashing (like a server)...basic idea is to allow the disk controller to stack and prioritize multiple requests to minimize average latency due to back-forth head travel. Great for multi-program/multi-user where IO requests are treated as equal in priority, not so great on a single-user PC where the sequence and priority of the IO requests is determined by the OS and streamed to the disk system in that order. You can end up with a situation where IO requests from lower priority processes (ie virus scanner, background services) get serviced first due to the AHCI/NCQ prioritization, making your throughput-critical simulation wait to be fed. On an SSD (well, at least on the Intel X-25s) NCQ/AHCI allows the disk to queue up requests so that there is no lag between the time an IO is completed and the issuance of the next one, because there is no head/rotational latency on the SSD. The relative scale of the timing is what's so different here...the delay between requests is no big deal in a mechanical disk system where latency averages 4-10 milliseconds, but becomes an issue when the latency drops to 50-100 microseconds as in the case of the better SSDs. A word of warning--the Intel ACH10R chipset on my eVGA X-58 mobo did not play well in ACHI. I had a couple early episodes of catastrophic disk corruption using it in that mode, with the latest drivers. Some research suggested I was not alone. I ended up putting the SSD in NCQ/AHCI on the motherboard's secondary JMicron JMB363 controller--and that too was a problem, but was corrected with new drivers directly from JMicron. Also, there are some nagging issues with the Velociraptor and intel controllers in AHCI mode that keep cropping up. I think I'd put the 1TB drive on your main SATA controller in IDE mode, put the SSD on your secondary mobo controller in AHCI mode (assuming that's possible on your mobo) and run the raptors in IDE mode on the Areca card. And I'm not sure the RAID0 is going to be worth the trouble. One more thought--you do NOT want the Windows swap file on your SSD. With only 60GB to start with, significant write activity to the swapfile can force low-level fragmentation of the data as the SSD's firmware spreads data out to do wear leveling on the MLC cells. That'll make access (write especially) slow down, and the only way to fix it is to do a complete erase of the SSD. Although you normally want to keep the swapfile on the same HDD as the OS, in this case I'd consider putting it on your 1TB drive.RegardsBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

Hi, Mark,as I wrote in another topic, the best performance you can achieve if you will use following recommendations:1. an operating system and the FSX must be on the different physical hard disks2. for the OS - install two quick HDD into RAID0 and use only one quarter of the whole RAID; remaining RAID volume to leave unusable3. install the FSX, nothing else, on a fastest SSD; the SSD size is depended of your requirementsDon't use the SSD for any swap and temporary files. The basic consideration is that frequent write operations lead to dramatical degradation of the SSD common performance. The SSD gives the best results for linear read/write operations. The next suggestion, use the SSD with no JMicron controller. Tests on most hardware sites show that this controller has no good characteristics after long usage the SSD, in another word is more influent with performance degradation. The best choice is either Indilinx or Intel from.

Hi people, ok, I am up and running. For reference for anyone using similar set up, here is what I found / did:The SSD I have set with no page file and I implemented all the vista tweaks as detailed here: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/sh...ead.php?t=56992The whole forum is a mine of useful information.I have the vertex attached to SATA 4 on my mobo. Is there anything to be gained by attaching it to SATA 1 ? I have set up all drives using IDE mode. The other 4 drives are on the Areca card in JBOD mode.It all seems to be working pretty good. I wondered if there was anything around to measure the performance of the set up, just to give an idea of how well its performing?FSX starts in about 20 seconds, load times are about 20 seconds and vista boots to desktop in about 10 seconds , after the BIOS business is finished.FSX is running very nicely, smooth as silkcheers, Mark

FSX starts in about 20 seconds, load times are about 20 seconds and vista boots to desktop in about 10 seconds , after the BIOS business is finished.

WOW!!! Mine takes like 10 minutes from power off to FSX default flight lol

I have the vertex attached to SATA 4 on my mobo. Is there anything to be gained by attaching it to SATA 1 ? I have set up all drives using IDE mode. The other 4 drives are on the Areca card in JBOD mode.

If you are speaking of SATA Port 1 versus SATA Port 4, there should be no difference - those are just the identifiers, and have nothign to do with the capabilities of the ports themselves. Did you stick with your original layout plans, or did you choose to alter what was going to go on what drive? -Greg