Would you put ASA on the main drive, or on the drive dedicated specifically to FSX? I ask because I know ASA interacts with FSX throughout out the flight. What's best, on the same drive or a different drive? Thanks.

The "best" answer would be "yes, put it on the same drive". But that may not be necessary, or even desirable, depending on the person's computer capabilities. So there is no "one size fits all" answer to the question.If a person is running a top of the line i7 that can handle ASA being on a second hard drive, then it would not be necessary. An example of when you may want to put it on a second drive would be if you had FSX on a vRaptor drive with other addons also on the vRap (that absolutely NEEDED to be on the vRap), and you were running out of space on that vRap to keep adding things there. In this case, putting ASA on the same vRap would add tons of extra texture files on the drive that FSX doesn't use all the time. The various (and numerous different) cloud, sky, water, etc textures that come with programs like ASA and REX only get "put into" FSX as part of the weather generation setup prior to running FSX, or if the user manually decides to change other textures like airport ground textures (runways, taxiways, etc). If after that "texture swapping" is done (with ASA on a second drive) you can still run FSX and ASA without it causing a realistic degradation to FSX performance, then it would be better to put ASA on a second drive and let FSX interact with the "real time" weather portion of ASA while flying in FSX.The real "best" answer is to try it on a second drive and see what happens. In my case, I never add anything to my primary FSX drive if it will be installing a large amount of "extra" files, like texture files that come with the program but DON'T ALL get used at the same time. I install these programs to a second drive, then use the program interface (or whatever way it may work with the program) to let the program "swap" the textures in FSX, then run FSX. I haven't run into a problem doing this yet with either ASA or REX, but I do maintain my computer so it will run at peak proficiency for FSX. ASA and REX on a second drive for me works fine this way, and I'm still running a Q9650. Your milage may vary.The same thing applies to other addon types that install tons of extra files. My Radar Contact is installed on a separate drive, and it works fine from there. Radar Contact installs tons of "wave" files (voice files) that don't all get used in every FSX session. If you can keep it off your primary FSX drive and it still works OK, you save a lot of "storage space" on that primary FSX drive.

In this case, putting ASA on the same vRap would add tons of extra texture files on the drive that FSX doesn't use all the time. The various (and numerous different) cloud, sky, water, etc textures that come with programs like ASA and REX only get "put into" FSX as part of the weather generation setup prior to running FSX, or if the user manually decides to change other textures like airport ground textures (runways, taxiways, etc). If after that "texture swapping" is done (with ASA on a second drive) you can still run FSX and ASA without it causing a realistic degradation to FSX performance, then it would be better to put ASA on a second drive and let FSX interact with the "real time" weather portion of ASA while flying in FSX.

Uh Falcon - not true of ASA. It comes with NO textures of it's own, therefore no *tons* of files get loaded *anywhere*. ASA will use textures from whichever program you choose, native FSX, REX, FEX XGraphics but supplies none of it's own.There would be no gain to putting ASA on a second HD, in fact there might be a minimal loss due to the cpu having to access a diffferent drive.Now, having ASA on a second COMPUTER so that the CPU processing is done away from the FS system would be beneficial for some systems.Vic

Hi Chuck,Just so you know I read and respond to these types of post also: There is no benefit or performance loss either way. After the initial load, ASA interacts with a very few files in FSX. It is mostly important to where you have the most HD space and if drives are filling up.Thanks!

Vic,You are right about the textures. I have so many darn addons I forget which ones have what in them sometimes.But I still submit that if FSX runs OK with ASA on a separate hard drive, then that is the place to put it. There is no use taking up valuable hard drive space on the FSX drive if the application will run fine from another drive. Part of the problem with vRap drives is there small size. With an FSX default installation, and only several "complex aircraft" addons that take up lots of hard drive space, plus a few huge photoscenery addons, it doesn't take long to start filling up that vRap. You need to keep a good portion of the FSX drive empty, and do regular defrags of it. Anything that doesn't need to go on the FSX drive shouldn't be put there.It's up to the user to determine whether it will work that way or not, depending on their hard drive space, what other addons they may NEED to put on the FSX drive (without question), and any other addons they may be able to have work correctly on separate drives. If ASA will work from a separate drive, then it should go on a separate drive.

I run it on my laptop purely because it is easier to see the interface without having to alt-tab on my main fsx pc

I have a new i7 920 clocked to 3.8 with 6gb of RAM. I have my OS (WIN7-64bit) and regular programs on a 1TB WD Black Caviar. FSX is on a 2nd hdd (750 Black Caviar) and FS9 is on a 3rd hdd (750 Black Caviar). Thoughts?

Hi,Still doesn't matter which one of the 3.

Thank you Jim and everyone else. I'm going to put it on the FSX drive.