I'm hoping to get some feedback from the folks in the community regarding drive usage for Flight Sim. I currently have a 7 Gig installation of FS2002 on my 30 gig drive. I have about 10 Gig free. I just purchased FS2004 and was thinking of installing another drive of 40GIG as well. I would use this as my dedicated FS2004 drive (among other related files). I think I'll keep FS2002 where it is for now but will most likely remove it completely when all my favorite add-on's are available for 2004.I guess my question is if you would dedicate a portion of a new drive for FS. We all know how big our collections can grow..Let me know!Thanks

Aaron,It's an excellent idea and I can recommend it. Before I upgraded my system, I had FS2002 on a separate drive, along with all my other games installations. There are some advantages to be had, for sure. It's possible to back up your existing FS installation before you ever need to format a drive, make system changes, exchange drives, etc. It will save you having to re-install all your 3rd party stuff if you ever need to re-install FS9. In the past, I have backed-up FS2002 on my other drive, formatted, re-installed and then copied the whole Aircraft, flights, modules, gauges, etc folders straight back into the new FS installation. It takes minutes rather than hours!Also, it will give you a mass of spare disc space, so there'll be no worries about storage anymore. You can happily keep a raw, clean insllation of FS9 in a backup folder, just in case you need to restore things later.Also, my system seemed to be much happier running games off of a seperate hard drive to my system disc. Perhaps because it was reading from a different drive than the drive used for swap files. Not sure, but it seemed to make a difference.I will be adding an extra drive to my system when I have the extra money. No doubt about that at all.Cheers, Simon.

I'd agree with Simon - another drive is an excellent idea.Here I have 2 x 40GB Maxtor drives.They are both Partitioned- the Master HDD is split 25GB as C(WinME) with a copy of FS2k2(about 7gb) and FS9.The other part of that drive is E with WinXP and another copy of FS9 for experimenting with.The Slave drive is split into D(22 gb storage- includes all spare aircraft etc) and F(18 gb Backup including compressed "Drive Image " file each of C and E - updated every two weeks- makes for very easy recovery in the event of a disaster).The only other thing to say is that the more space you have the more you will use- you can't ever have too much.Dave

Thanks for the feedback. I'm now wondering if you can move files that have been installed on one drive to the new drive. I'm "test flying" FS9 on my laptop and may wait until I get a new drive to install on my desktop.Thanks for the advice!

I can agree with that last sentence! You mention Maxtor drives. I don't have a clue as to which drives are better than others, or if it really even matters. Best Buy has a sale going on nearly all 40GB drives right now but I can get the Segate drive for $59 after rebate. Do you have a drive preference based on experience?Thanks!

When I buy my next, it will probably be a Western Digital... mainly because that's what I have in my PC right now. It's my understanding that it's best to stick with the same manufacturer for a second drive. I read it on the internet... it MUST be true! ;)I recommend an 8mb buffer (A little more expensive but performs some 25-30%+ better!) and most definitely get 7200rpm.Here is a handy link: http://www.storagereview.com/It has a good FAQ section, which explains the 8mb buffer and also has a leaderboard of the best drives... along with plenty of reviews.For the record, according to storagereview, the current fastest drive is said to be Fujitsu MAS3735, 73gb, giving a cool 3.6millisecond access time, 15000rpm, 8mb buffer and... well... that's going to have a stupendous transfer rate. erm.... it's $700 (lmao)Hope that helps. Simon.