I have many hard-drives (there dumping SATA 3.0 1TB drives @ around $60-70 US) and was wondering if I should keep FSX on the main-drive with the scenery files on the Raid-0 (not in the program folder) or completely place FSX on the Raid drive? :( Thanks for any help offered...Darryl

I was a disastrous mistake when I installed the OS on a RAID0 drive. :( Although the FSX was on a fast SATA drive I faced stutters all the time.Recently I replaced my RAID0 drives of the OS with a fast SATA drive. Now the stutters have gone. Never use a RAID0 in a FSX system.

Recently I replaced my RAID0 drives of the OS with a fast SATA drive. Now the stutters have gone. Never use a RAID0 in a FSX system.

Your advice is great if you were using either Motherboard Raid or a cheap Raid Card. But it doesn't apply if you have a "good" dedicated RAID card that is set up correctly.I purchased the 3ware 9650SE-4LPML as a result of the advice given by Nick Needham. I attached 4 WD1600YS's on it and set it up in RAID0 according to this similar post by Nick.Btw I recently had "a problem" that took down the mb, video card and that 3ware Card. 3ware was great (LSI now I think) and I had a fairly quick replacement. Was a great feeling after replacing that card to have the RAID0 Array come back up like nothing had happened. No data loss as far as I can tell.Load times are much snappier e.g. "Sitka Approach" takes 35 seconds. Certainly no stutters. Well not in most places. Manhattan and KSEA can be a bit of a problem. I'm happy with it. I plan on using this specific card or another (equal to or better) with 3 or 4 small SSDs for the next build.You might want to check into what people say about SSDs as you might be satisfied using just one for FSX.A couple of ATTO Bench's... Left is the VelociRaptor 3000HLFS and Right the RAID0 Array.

Hi Rob,I were using the RAID0 controller of my motherboard Asus Maximus III Formula and two Samsung SSDs of 32 GB each for the RAID0. Os and applications were on this RAID0 array, the FSX was installed on a fast Super Talent SSD with 128 GB capacity. The system reacted very fast. The FSX operation was disappointing because of too much stutter which I never could completely eliminate.Recently I replaced all three SSDs by one SSD INTEL X25-M II, 160GB for OS, applications and FSX. The result is stunning. The stutters are eliminated. There are also no stutters on places such as Manhattan and KSEA. This is the benchmark of my SSD:The FSX simulation needs fast reading of rather small files. The sequential read rate is almost irrelevant. Most important are short access times. If FSX reads 1000 small files with an access time of 0.063 ms, then only 0.063 seconds are needed for this job. This is eliminating the stutterers and providing crisp and not blurry textures.I fly with LOD_RADIUS=10.500000 in places like Manhattan and KSEA silky smooth and with great image quality.I suggest that you try this before you invest into another good RAID card and four SSDs.I make data and system backups by writing and restoring images with Acronis.

Recently I replaced all three SSDs by one SSD INTEL X25-M II, 160GB for OS, applications and FSX. The result is stunning. The stutters are eliminated. There are also no stutters on places such as Manhattan and KSEA.

Hi Relax,I'm sorry... my mistake there as my stutter statement could be misleading.I was just throwing out my "problems areas" and "stutters" which I mention are due to low frame rates. For all intents and purposes, I should have never mentioned it as it's not applicable. I think in my case it's partially due to the video card "being saturated". But who knows.I leave my FPS set to 25 wherever I go as I don't care if they are higher in some places (like in that nutty Aleutian Cargo Run where FPS can run into the triple digits easy). In the Manhattan example, I'll be flying North between Central Park & Jersey running high teens to low 20s... then just coming up at the North end of CP before turning East to La Guardia and frames drop to single digits. Hit the "Windows Key" select FSX on the taskbar then "Enter" and frame rates ramp back up into the 20s. Like I said... who knows and irrelevant to the OP's question.

The sequential read rate is almost irrelevant.

Well I think this "depends". As I said, I set up my system according to what NickN recommends... defragging with O&O Defrag is used. And defragging by "NAME" is a part of this process. No point in doing this (that I can off-the-cuff see) unless it is related to Sequential Reads. Quoting from one of Nick's posts at SimForums: "One of the reasons why I specify O&O defrag and use of the NAME defrag is because of what I posted above.. FSX and many other programs work off of a alphanumeric file name system to call files into physical memory. When we NAME defrag the drive we are in fact creating a much more 'sequential read' situation and therefore taking much greater advantage of the cache and buffer to host speed within the 'burst'. By using the NAME defrag method we are in many ways assisting the drive by making our access requests more sequential, in example."

I suggest that you try this before you invest into another good RAID card and four SSDs.

As I suggested to the OP, he might be happy with just the one SSD for FSX (hence probably me too).For me it's something I like experimenting with. I have a good raid card to try with first... with handful of some "Inexpensive" Intel X-25Vs... that looks interesting to see in a new system.

Rob, what you and Nick refer to is not "sequential read" (of large files) but making the disk access requests more sequential in order to reduce the access time if you read many files in a sequential manner. For applications such as FSX The sequential read rate is almost irrelevant. The random read rates for small files and the short access times are counting.

For me it's something I like experimenting with. I have a good raid card to try with first... with handful of some "Inexpensive" Intel X-25Vs... that looks interesting to see in a new system.

I am looking forward to your report with the practical results of this setup.

If you have 4GB of memory try flying into stituation where there is about to be stuttering. Save flight. Let it stutter. Exit FSX. Restart. Load flight. If you have enough memory, your hard drive will hardly be accessed. See if the stuttering occurs.Depending on your mem use this might not work (addon scenery?). This trick is relying on the fact that there is enough memory to cache all the needed files.I was curious about SSDs so I got the Intel 160GB one. Essentially it's like running with everything cached. As far as I can tell it's the same otherwise.I'm also running without swap file too - I thought I'd try it and I haven't had any troubles so I leave it off. I do not recommend this unless you're willing to re-install your whole FSX.Modern OS's with their "preemptive swapping" irritate me. I'm sure there's a way to tell XP64 not to swap until it has too, but with swap off that's not a problem anyway.