Hi All,After reading a previous post here concerning file distribution and discs, I'm curious. With how cheap drives are now, how should we really distribute a FS9 or FSX installation including addons? Operating system stays on the primary active system drive (usually c: but I know it doesn't have to be). Where would the page file, if being used, go? How many drives to buy? Where and how many ways physically or logically do we split FS? All interesting questions.Currently with FS9 I have my OS XPsp3 on drive0 C: and my apps on drive0 D: FS9 sits on drive1 E: with a final partition on drive1 S: for storage. Thinking of adding a separate drive (magnetic or SSD) for FS9 and associated apps (scenery, etc...) so that it can be defragged and optimized according to O&O defrag file placement.Any thoughts?Chris

Hi All,After reading a previous post here concerning file distribution and discs, I'm curious. With how cheap drives are now, how should we really distribute a FS9 or FSX installation including addons? Operating system stays on the primary active system drive (usually c: but I know it doesn't have to be). Where would the page file, if being used, go? How many drives to buy? Where and how many ways physically or logically do we split FS? All interesting questions.Currently with FS9 I have my OS XPsp3 on drive0 C: and my apps on drive0 D: FS9 sits on drive1 E: with a final partition on drive1 S: for storage. Thinking of adding a separate drive (magnetic or SSD) for FS9 and associated apps (scenery, etc...) so that it can be defragged and optimized according to O&O defrag file placement.Any thoughts?Chris

ChrisGreat questions.I have a rig dedicated to FSXI use a 1TB drive for the OS and the small amount of software necessary to carry out essential non-FSX tasks, it is less than 2% full so will be quite speedy.I would not use partitions they tend to slow things down a wee bit - separate HDDs are the way to go.I run FSX on a 120GB SSD and that makes loading very fast.I also put the Paging File on the SSD as it should always be located on the fastest drive. I experimented here and found that with large amounts of onboard RAM (8GB) you can get away with a smaller paging file. So now I use 512Kb on the C:Windows drive and 2048 Kb on the SSD and that seems to work.One tip I would give you would be to switch to a 64-bit OS it handles, more onboard RAM, virtual memory much better than a 32-bit OS (and graphics memory Vista and Win 7).RegardsPeterH

Hi Peter,Thanks for your input. I'm already running Win7 x64 on an Intel 80gig X25M SSD but at the office on a 1366 m/b with a 920 proc. Planning on making the cut over this fall with a newer 1366 rig at home. Before I do that though I posed these questions so that I would build it correctly at home. Sticking with FS9 but will probably go with a "K" proc to overclock. Currently looking to go 6gig with the OS on a SSD, FS9 on a SSD and third volume to be solution for storage and apps that don't rely heavily on read operations.

Hi Peter,Thanks for your input. I'm already running Win7 x64 on an Intel 80gig X25M SSD but at the office on a 1366 m/b with a 920 proc. Planning on making the cut over this fall with a newer 1366 rig at home. Before I do that though I posed these questions so that I would build it correctly at home. Sticking with FS9 but will probably go with a "K" proc to overclock. Currently looking to go 6gig with the OS on a SSD, FS9 on a SSD and third volume to be solution for storage and apps that don't rely heavily on read operations.

ChrisThat sounds good! Bear in mind that SATA III (6Gb/s) is with us and so you might consider a VRAP SATA III drive for the OS and/or FSX as a less expensive alternative. Because I only have a 'light' OS load I run Win 7 on my slower but huge HDD and FSX on the SSD, and find that that is a good compromise. The SSD makes a huge difference to loading textures into FSX both at start-up and during flights.Thay system should be a killer for FS9.RegardsPeterH