If so, what has been your experience? I know very little about them and was wondering if anyone has had any positive experiences.Thanks,Mark

If so, what has been your experience? I know very little about them and was wondering if anyone has had any positive experiences.Thanks,Mark

Hi Mark I run FSX on a dedicated OCZ Colossus 120GB SSD and it's great. Very fast Loading times and for me less stutters during turns and no lag in loading textures. I also put my paging file (win7 system managed) on the SSD and that may help. No defragging just the occasional "TRIM" or similar command to free up file blocks that do not appearto be empty but are.Note: FSX doesn't run any faster than on a conventional HDD it is just smoother on my system.RegardsPeterH

Hi,I have two Intel Solid State Drives (SSD) 40gig with Windows 7 64 bit OS on one & 160gig with FSX on the other - they are great. All my programs and storage are located on two additional 10,000rpm drives.

Thanks Peter. I had the option to get one of these on my new system, but simply did not know enough about them to make an educated decision. My box came with FSX installed on a VelociRaptor and the OS on a WD500gb which is working well at this time. I've only had it a few days and is quite a departure from my 'old' AMD system (which worked pretty well after a coupla 2, 6, 8, 10 hours of adjusting) :(

Hi,I have two Intel Solid State Drives (SSD) 40gig with Windows 7 64 bit OS on one & 160gig with FSX on the other - they are great. All my programs and storage are located on two additional 10,000rpm drives.

Hey Mike-Sounds like a great setup Mike. Are there any issues with your MB in terms of firmware updates or your system 'seeing' the drives?

I have Intel SSD 160 GB with 02HD firmware ( latest for this day ). I used it for FSX and addon . in the past I used 7200 rpm hard disk when install many addon free and payware ( nearly 90 GB max for me ), It increase FSX loading time and decrease performance during flight . And need disk defrag to improve a little performance.Now , on SSD no matter if many addon ,same loading time . no lag on load texture and stutter on turn.Other program on 7200rpm hard disk because no significane change in performance .FSX is system hungry all the way .

Are there any issues with your MB in terms of firmware updates or your system 'seeing' the drives?

I use three 160GB Intel X-25M SSDs in my FS machine.AFAIK, all of the mainstream SSDs work anywhere a SATA HDD can be used. The Intels, and presumably others, exhibit dramatically faster small-file access performance (i.e. loading FS textures) if the drives are used in AHCI/NCQ mode, which does portend doing some extra design planning in the system.In my system, I use the mobo's primary Intel ICH10R controller in AHCI mode for all three SSDs, a 300GB Velociraptor, and the DVD-ROM, and I use a secondary JMicron JMB362 controller on the mobo in IDE mode to access a 2TB WD Caviar Black HDD in an eSATA enclosure for mass storage and system backups. The current drivers for the ICH10R controllers do not work properly with SSDs in AHCI/NCQ mode, so I use Intel's MatrixStorage drivers instead. And the JMicron controllers (common as secondary controllers on many mobos) needed an updated driver to do AHCI/NCQ properly on my mobo (an eVGA X58). The design limitation is that you can't mix AHCI and IDE modes on a single controller, and most platter-based HDDs work faster in IDE mode. So it's important to do some detailed planning w/r/t mobo/disc controllers to get all the performance you're paying for.So to make a short answer unbearably long...an SSD will work just fine in IDE mode without doing anything special. It'll work much faster, though, if you take advantage of NCQ by properly configuring the system.CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

If I'm not wrong, FSX mostly is reading data from drive as long as scenery/textures come in mind.So it seems that read performance, is much more important than write performance. SSDs with good write performance are much more expensive.Does small block I/O does have any effect ? Sam

If I'm not wrong, FSX mostly is reading data from drive as long as scenery/textures come in mind.So it seems that read performance, is much more important than write performance. SSDs with good write performance are much more expensive.Does small block I/O does have any effect ? Sam

You are correct w/r/t read vs write performance, which makes the less expensive MLC (multi-layer cell)-based SSDs a good fit for FS and other gaming use. Once installed, most of FS disk activity is large numbers of small file reads (textures, scenery bgls, etc).Small block I/O performance does have an effect, which is why AHCI/NCQ mode (at least with an Intel SSD) is important. Small file access, and hence FS loading times, are fairly dramatically lowered with NCQ. With NCQ enabled, FSX loads in a bit over half the time on my PC as compared to using the same SSD in IDE mode.CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

I use three 160GB Intel X-25M SSDs in my FS machine.AFAIK, all of the mainstream SSDs work anywhere a SATA HDD can be used. The Intels, and presumably others, exhibit dramatically faster small-file access performance (i.e. loading FS textures) if the drives are used in AHCI/NCQ mode, which does portend doing some extra design planning in the system.In my system, I use the mobo's primary Intel ICH10R controller in AHCI mode for all three SSDs, a 300GB Velociraptor, and the DVD-ROM, and I use a secondary JMicron JMB362 controller on the mobo in IDE mode to access a 2TB WD Caviar Black HDD in an eSATA enclosure for mass storage and system backups. The current drivers for the ICH10R controllers do not work properly with SSDs in AHCI/NCQ mode, so I use Intel's MatrixStorage drivers instead. And the JMicron controllers (common as secondary controllers on many mobos) needed an updated driver to do AHCI/NCQ properly on my mobo (an eVGA X58). The design limitation is that you can't mix AHCI and IDE modes on a single controller, and most platter-based HDDs work faster in IDE mode. So it's important to do some detailed planning w/r/t mobo/disc controllers to get all the performance you're paying for.So to make a short answer unbearably long...an SSD will work just fine in IDE mode without doing anything special. It'll work much faster, though, if you take advantage of NCQ by properly configuring the system.CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

Hi Bob-I just ordered an Intel 160GB drive which should be here shortly. I want to clone my VRaptor drive that holds FSX onto the new SSD when it arrives. Anything you can think of that I need to be aware of? I'll be using O&O DiskImage for the job.Thanks,Mark

You are correct w/r/t read vs write performance, which makes the less expensive MLC (multi-layer cell)-based SSDs a good fit for FS and other gaming use. Once installed, most of FS disk activity is large numbers of small file reads (textures, scenery bgls, etc).Small block I/O performance does have an effect, which is why AHCI/NCQ mode (at least with an Intel SSD) is important. Small file access, and hence FS loading times, are fairly dramatically lowered with NCQ. With NCQ enabled, FSX loads in a bit over half the time on my PC as compared to using the same SSD in IDE mode.CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

Bob, Thanks for your reply - Oh that's 6 months later.....Is there anything interesting - after those 6 months ? RegardsSam

Anyone tried SSD in a raid configuration? Is it possible?

Guys,Based on what Bob is saying, I need some help deciding what is going where. I am adding a 60 gig SSD to my existing configuration. These are the storage controller options that I have on my mobo:Intel ICH10R Southbridge 6 xSATA 3 Gb/s ports Intel Matrix Storage Technology Support RAID 0,1,5,10 Marvell 88SE6320 2 x SAS (RAID 0 and 1) Marvell 88SE6111 1 xUltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices 1 xExternal SATA 3.0 Gb/s port (SATA On-the-go)I currently have two western digital black 500 Gig drives. I plan on installing Win7 professional on one of the WDBlack drives while using the second as storage. I will be installing FSX+Scenery+Rex and DCS:A10+BlackShark on the SSD. My current FSX profile is 46 Gigs. In order to get the benefits from the SSD, I need to run all three drives in AHCI mode correct? Does this mean that I will see the performance benefits of the SSD while sacrificing speed on my WD black drives? I am limited currently to buying on SSD and the 60 gig options are in my price range. Also, is there anything special that needs to be done in order for Win7 to install on drives in AHCI?

I think you only need to run the SSD in NCQ mode, not the HDs. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I hugely respect everyone bob has to say....he certainly seems to know what he's talking about when it comes to hardware. But, can anyone confirm that current thinking is fsx/fs9 runs faster/smoother on a ssd than a vrap? I seem to recall having read in NickN's guides that Vrap was preferred over SSD for a fs dedicated drive? Or have technical advances / cheaper prices resulted in ssd's now being the preferred option?