Has come to my recent attention, that storing FSX on a separate drive should cure a lot of problems. And it

I have 2 VelociRaptor 300GB drives (along with a 1TB drive) in my current PC. One is my Vista/FS9 drive and the other is my FSX drive. If you do a RAID setup, you can get some speed by running a striped array, but then you lose the redundancy of RAID. If one disk fails, you lose everything. I recommend just running FSX on one drive as the install size will grow. And yes, the VelociRaptors are fast.

I have one drive for the OS (an older raptor) and a newer SATA drive dedicated to FSX (plus a raid setup for my other files).I'm not sure if you get better performance by having FSX on a separate drive from your OS, but I can tell you that Nick N recommends using RAID for either your OS or your FSX drive, unless you have a dedicated RAID controller installed (i.e. not motherboard raid). So I took his advice and only used my mobo raid for non-fsx storage.

I'm building a new system. For my FSX drive, I'm installing a WD Caviar Black 2TB 7,200 RPM hard drive, instead of using a VelociRaptor. Many reasons I decided to do this:1. Current reviews of the Caviar Black 2TB drive indicate it is actually FASTER than a vRap, even at only 7,200 RPM's. With the new technology WD is using with the drive, and the fact it uses four 500GB platters, the seek and read/write times are just as fast, and in many cases, faster than a vRap. If you haven't read the reviews from places like Tom's Hardware and other very respectable review sites, you may want to check out their reviews on the Caviar Black 2TB drive.2. Cost per Megabyte of storage: The 2TB Caviar Black is only about $125 more than a SINGLE 300GB vRap. It would take me over SIX 300GB vRaps to get the same storage capacity as ONE Caviar Black 2TB drive. My current FSX installation is already almost 500GB in size, and that is just for addons that MUST be accessed during my FSX session (does not include stand-alone apps like flight planners, texture replacement addons like GEX, etc). I will be able to have my entire FSX installation on ONE drive (as far as the apps that NEED to be accessed during the flying session), with plenty of room yet for future addons like more photoscenery that takes up tons of hard drive space.3. I'm still going to use one vRap for my OS drive. But there just isn't a vRap drive that is large enough now for a large FSX installation with lots of addons. Instead of buying multiple vRaps for a large FSX install, then having to have FSX installed on several of them, I'm going the Caviar Black 2TB route. Cost per megabyte, performance equal to or better than a vRap, all on one drive. I'm seriously beginning to think the future of vRaps may be limited. Why would WD develop and release a 7,200 RPM 2TB drive that equals (at least) the performance of their own vRaps, yet has much higher storage capacity at a much lower cost-per-megabyte?

I am going to post something here that was also posted on the "Arma 2" forums in regards to decreasing load times and speeding up performance:Has anyone created a RAMDISK and loaded FSX (or FS9) entirely on the RAM Disk?Ideally, you would probably need around 6-8 gigabytes of RAM installed because FSX doesn't appear to need more than two gigs (some addons do; the FSX general application normally tops out under two gigs, however). You would then have to monitor (using various apps) what files FSX always accesses and then put those same files into the RAM Disk in order to have them always accessible instead of having to be streamed / accessed from the hard drive. Thus, decreasing load times and eliminating possible stutters, blurries and increasing overall performance.

On separate disks...I'd recommend it, if only for good housekeeping! If you can dedicate an entire physical drive to the simulator, it will have the read/write heads to itself - maximizing the use of the drive for the simulator. This also makes for nice separation of your sim items from the rest of your computer, and might make backups and restores a little more manageable. Not much in-game benefit, but it does help a bit with loading times. I run FSX on a dedicated vRap, and it performs well. I'm getting a little pinched for space, so the next update will likely be to a multi-TB drive. The thought about dedicating a very large 7200 RPM 2TB drive is also on-target. Without getting too technical, these new high capacity drives store a LOT more data in the same amount of space as older drives... "high areal density" is the term. By virtue of this, the disk drive heads do not need to move as far to get your information - thus speeding the process up. This speed up is rivaling the overall speed benefits of 10,000 RPM drives... and for much lower costs per megabyte. With the proper defragging/disk organization methods, a large 2TB drive could also act as "cold storage" for your photos, music, movies... anything that you don't use often or when you are simming, thus not wasting all that space! (You will want to make sure that FSX remains physically first on the disk, a slightly advanced topic but important to know) On RAMdisks...Interesting thought. Yes, you would need a capable 64-bit OS to support it, along with a capable motherboard/memory combo due to the sheer amount of RAM you would need to manage. It would need to load the RAMdisk up whenever you booted the computer as well. Hibernation would be strongly discouraged, as it would probably write the entire FSX ramdisk to a hard drive when going into hibernation. The loading of the RAMdisk could potentially be a very time consuming process, as it would effectively need to load every item in the FSX directory up into memory. Automated routines might be able to do it, but it would still take lots of time in my opinion. I'm sure RAMdisk performance would outstrip SSD for speed and access times, but in the end, is the daily hard drive access to load it into memory going to be worth it?It'd be an interesting experiment for certain!

Thanks a lot for all your input. "high areal density" on a 7200 rpm drive sounds interesting, probably doesn

Thanks a lot for all your input. "high areal density" on a 7200 rpm drive sounds interesting, probably doesn

I'm not sure if you get better performance by having FSX on a separate drive from your OS, but I can tell you that Nick N recommends using RAID for either your OS or your FSX drive, unless you have a dedicated RAID controller installed (i.e. not motherboard raid). So I took his advice and only used my mobo raid for non-fsx storage.

I could be wrong or maybe this is a typo but I believe he recommends NOT using RAID for your OS or FSX unless you have a dedicated RAID controller.The VelociRaptor has seemed to give me a major boost in load times.

The VelociRaptor has seemed to give me a major boost in load times.

Only in load times? Not in fps? I always thought those disks were good for FSX because they would make FSX run better (because things are loaded easier).

Only in load times? Not in fps? I always thought those disks were good for FSX because they would make FSX run better (because things are loaded easier).

Easier does not mean faster, just easier. The number crunching of the data is the job of the CPU, the display the job of the GPU. While both will benefit from a faster-accessed hard drive in terms of data access neither can turn that into a fps advantage unles both are also `tuned up` at the same time. FSX is ALWAYS using HD access, but the discussion here is about how to reduce that access (by loading the bits and bytes into RAM) or reduce that access TIME by using a faster HD, which will speed loading of those same bits and bytes but not the display or number-crunhing efficiency of the result.Greater fps is achieved ONLY through faster CPU and higher-throughput GPU performance and nothing else. However, both can be badly restricted by file access times so using the latest, fastest processor and grpahic card benefits you little if you still use an old 5,400 rpm HD.

I am reading about SSD here: does this really eliminate the need to defrag? And does a SSD drive blow even the fastest RAID setup out of the water...?Btw I said 'fps' but I really meant 'smoothness'. Fps is no problems since I fly using DX10 (>40) but I do get stutters in certain areas and maybe a faster drive might help there?

I am reading about SSD here: does this really eliminate the need to defrag? And does a SSD drive blow even the fastest RAID setup out of the water...?

Yes, it does eliminate the need. Defragging on a normal drive is necessary because excess fragmentation causes the read/write head to have to move all over the disk to get your information. Because there is no read/write head with an SSD (it's all electronic!), file fragmentation is a complete non-issue. There are additional reasons like drive longevity, but the real key to remember is that because there is no read/write head on the drive, there will be 0.0% benefit to performance by defragmenting a SSD drive. SSD drives, being solid state, do destroy the best RAIDs for access time (how quick it can start moving a file), although not always for data throughput (how big the firehose is when the data starts flowing). Most files needed by FSX are small, and there are TONS of them, so the access time is the most important factor for FSX drive usage. By comparison, people doing video editing would focus on data throughput, because they deal with small numbers of HUGE files.

Btw I said 'fps' but I really meant 'smoothness'. Fps is no problems since I fly using DX10 (>40) but I do get stutters in certain areas and maybe a faster drive might help there?

Only slightly. If you find your simulator stuttering on view changes, or popping in textures when you look left or right, those events may improve with a faster hard drive system. General smoothness when in the same view mode won't likely change too much, as you are still bottlenecked at the CPU level. A faster hard drive system may improve it slightly, but it won't always be noticable. Pop-in and view change hiccups will be better though. In my humble opinion, your best bang-for-the-buck with SSD drives is using them as your primary system drive. I think it would benefit your day-to-day computer use a heck of a lot more than it would benefit your sim experience. But then again, I can understand why people would want to dedicate the best possible components to the simulation, so I can't knock that!

Yes, it does eliminate the need. Defragging on a normal drive is necessary because excess fragmentation causes the read/write head to have to move all over the disk to get your information. Because there is no read/write head with an SSD (it's all electronic!), file fragmentation is a complete non-issue. There are additional reasons like drive longevity, but the real key to remember is that because there is no read/write head on the drive, there will be 0.0% benefit to performance by defragmenting a SSD drive.

This is true, but there are some issues with low-level fragmentation and SSD wear-levelling to be aware of. The new generations of SSDs that support the "TRIM" command together with new capabilities in Win 7 pretty much deal with this automatically behind the scenes. Otherwise, some periodic file system maintenance is needed to keep the SSD's performance at it's peak.

SSD drives, being solid state, do destroy the best RAIDs for access time (how quick it can start moving a file), although not always for data throughput (how big the firehose is when the data starts flowing). Most files needed by FSX are small, and there are TONS of them, so the access time is the most important factor for FSX drive usage. By comparison, people doing video editing would focus on data throughput, because they deal with small numbers of HUGE files.

An important point, and why I think the Velociraptor is also still a better choice for FS than the Caviar Black previously mentioned...the reviews I've read show that random access time for the 10,000 RPM Vrap is nearly twice as fast as the 2TB Caviar. The real improvement to FS performance from a faster HDD is quick initial access to the file--especially important when doing things that result in a lot of new files being loaded (i.e. taxiing with complex scenery, high-speed low-level flight, approach to an airport with tons of AI acft, rapid view panning etc). Once the files are loaded, FSX has a reasonably good scenery cache system that will keep the files in memory.

In my humble opinion, your best bang-for-the-buck with SSD drives is using them as your primary system drive. I think it would benefit your day-to-day computer use a heck of a lot more than it would benefit your sim experience. But then again, I can understand why people would want to dedicate the best possible components to the simulation, so I can't knock that!

There's an important caveat for using an SSD as your main system drive--there are two technologies used in the currently available SSDs. The most widely used and inexpensive SSDs use multi-layer cell (MLC) flash memory, which has limits on the number of writes per cell before the memory begins to degrade (right now limits are around 10,000 writes per cell). The more expensive single-layer cell (SLC) technology does not have this issue. You can read either type of SSD billions of times without affecting it's useful life. MSFS is an application well-suited to an MLC SSD, because once installed, nearly all of the disk activity associated with running it involves reads of data like bgl and texture files...very little disk writing goes on. Contrast that with your OS, which keeps a cache file that is constantly being written, plus copious windows updates, system restore snapshots, etc. Use of an MLC-based SSD for the OS could prove problematic in some systems because the much heavier disk write load could prematurely wear out the drive.An SSD as an FS drive really excels in fast loading--on my 300GB Velociraptor, FSX loads in just under 3 min. Loading it from a mirror image on my SSD, it takes around 20 sec. Stutters and popping textures are almost nonexistent when run from the SSD--they weren't a huge issue on the Velociraptor, but there was some of that to deal with.Bob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

An SSD as an FS drive really excels in fast loading--on my 300GB Velociraptor, FSX loads in just under 3 min. Loading it from a mirror image on my SSD, it takes around 20 sec. Stutters and popping textures are almost nonexistent when run from the SSD--they weren't a huge issue on the Velociraptor, but there was some of that to deal with.

This statement and others like it always interest me, Bob.I have FS9, and FSX on a separate SATA drive (7200RPM; nothing fancy), and whenever I start FSX, it loads up fairly fast. I'd say... 10-15 seconds at most? This is of course, when it is not caching new scenery, or new aircraft addons. Now, when I start an actual flight it takes about a minute to a minute and a half to fully load depending on location, aircraft, traffic, scenery complexity etc.I guess I am want to know (for Smiles & Grins) what determines the speed of the load time: A fast CPU, or fast hard drive?My CPU is overclocked to 3.75 GHz, so I am inclined to think it is the CPU, but don't know for sure.