Hard Drive Choice - Complicated

[immortal 0]

Hi,Narrowing down my hard drive choice to either a 300gb Velociraptor 10,000rpm for my OS and a seperate 300gb Velociraptor 10,000rpm for FSX OR an SSD for the OS and a seperate one for FSX.My question is this.... If i go the SSD route is there any disadvantage by having a 320gb SSD for both os and fsx as i understand the main benefit of having seperate hard drives is that fsx will load faster and load textures faster as its pulling off its own hard drive and hasnt got to find it all mixed up with windows. On an SSD that wont be the case will it as it will always be in the same place so i cant see any benefit of having 2x160gb SSD instead of one 320gb?Matt

[Alex Sarfati 0]

Hi Matt,320GB isn't really neccessary for a SSD. You could fit FSX and the OS on a 120GB SSD. Make sure the SSD you purchase has sandforce controllers and has TRIM support.

[immortal 0]

Hi,I will have Windows 7 Ultimate, FSX and other programs such as Photoshop CS4 so id rather buy bigger than run out of space. I will however be having 2x1tb samsung F3 7200rpm drives raided mirror for backup of my pics, music etcThe SSD ive seen is actually 240gb and says it has Sandforce SF1200 controller, and read/write speeds of 285/275mbpsMatt

[Alex Sarfati 0]

Hi Matt,Does it have TRIM support? That is a really important function on SSDs for maintaining high performance levels.

[immortal 0]

Hi,Yeah it says it has Native Trim SupportMatt

[Alex Sarfati 0]

Hi Matt,That's good. Who is the manufacturer? And what is the model?

[cmeeks 8]

The SSD ive seen is actually 240gb and says it has Sandforce SF1200 controller, and read/write speeds of 285/275mbps

It's like you spotted it in the wild or something...Anyway, the whole point of having two hard drives was so that one hard drive could be completely dedicated to searching for files for FSX. SSDs are so fast, that it's unnecessary. You don't have a actuating arm physicaly looking for files on an SSD. I have the 120GB version of the drive you're looking at and I can't speak highly enough of it. Windows welcome screen is like a blip in the bootup process, office programs open within the release of the mouse button, etc! The greatest benefit of all, however, is no noise! I had a 150GB velocirapter and it was noisy as... so glad to get that sucker out of my computer.

[Guest jahman]

...i cant see any benefit of having 2x160gb SSD instead of one 320gb?...

The benefit is 1 SSD at 300 MB/Sec or 2 SSDs at 600 MB/Sec w SATA3 :-)Cheers,- jahman.

[Alex Sarfati 0]

Hi Jahman,What's to say the SSDs he was looking at was SATAIII? could easily be a 160GB SATAII.

[Clutch Cargo 385]

Based on your question, Immortal, if you go strictly the SSD route you want to think about how many add-ons you plan to install. I did. That's why I ended up going this route:(1) 300GB Velociraptor SATA3 for my OS (I typically use up about 200GB for OS and other programs)(1) 600GB Velociraptor SATA6 for FS2004 (lot's of add-ons)(1) 256GB SSD strictly for FSX The SSD was sort of a last minute purchase when I did my new build just to see how they work. Thought that a 120GB would be way to small should I start adding big add-ons so I went for the 256. They are fast but I was actually more impressed with the 600GB VR. It used to take 5 minutes to load a Megascenery add-on (timed it), on a WD 7200RPM drive. Took only 44 seconds with the rapter.It actually seems to take longer with the SSD to load FSX the first time I use it then as I continue use the program or restart it, it does get faster. Not sure if that is normal operation for an SSD but haven't really explored it. I set the SSD in the BIOS as an AHCI: the Advanced Host Controller Interface allows Hot-Plugging and Native Commands Queuing aswell as multi-threaded access of the drive by applications. Supposedly this is faster but I have done a little reading saying this could cause issues as well. Some SSD manufactures do not/will not support it. But thought I would first try it like this. I can always go back and disable this since FSX is a new install and I hardly have anything on the drive (changing it will cause you to reformat I believe). So I suggest doing a little reading first, as you are.just my 2Clutch

[immortal 0]

It's like you spotted it in the wild or something...Anyway, the whole point of having two hard drives was so that one hard drive could be completely dedicated to searching for files for FSX. SSDs are so fast, that it's unnecessary. You don't have a actuating arm physicaly looking for files on an SSD. I have the 120GB version of the drive you're looking at and I can't speak highly enough of it. Windows welcome screen is like a blip in the bootup process, office programs open within the release of the mouse button, etc! The greatest benefit of all, however, is no noise! I had a 150GB velocirapter and it was noisy as... so glad to get that sucker out of my computer.

Hi,Its this one.... My link

Based on your question, Immortal, if you go strictly the SSD route you want to think about how many add-ons you plan to install. I did. That's why I ended up going this route:(1) 300GB Velociraptor SATA3 for my OS (I typically use up about 200GB for OS and other programs)(1) 600GB Velociraptor SATA6 for FS2004 (lot's of add-ons)(1) 256GB SSD strictly for FSX The SSD was sort of a last minute purchase when I did my new build just to see how they work. Thought that a 120GB would be way to small should I start adding big add-ons so I went for the 256. They are fast but I was actually more impressed with the 600GB VR. It used to take 5 minutes to load a Megascenery add-on (timed it), on a WD 7200RPM drive. Took only 44 seconds with the rapter.It actually seems to take longer with the SSD to load FSX the first time I use it then as I continue use the program or restart it, it does get faster. Not sure if that is normal operation for an SSD but haven't really explored it. I set the SSD in the BIOS as an AHCI: the Advanced Host Controller Interface allows Hot-Plugging and Native Commands Queuing aswell as multi-threaded access of the drive by applications. Supposedly this is faster but I have done a little reading saying this could cause issues as well. Some SSD manufactures do not/will not support it. But thought I would first try it like this. I can always go back and disable this since FSX is a new install and I hardly have anything on the drive (changing it will cause you to reformat I believe). So I suggest doing a little reading first, as you are.just my 2Clutch

Hi,The only reason im going for the SSD is ive heard that they load textures so much faster than the velociraptors. Do you find that? Do you ever come in low on FSX and find the textures dont load fast enough when using the Velociraptors?Matt

[TechguyMaxC 516]

The benefit is 1 SSD at 300 MB/Sec or 2 SSDs at 600 MB/Sec w SATA3 :-)Cheers,- jahman.

SATA "2" (i.e. SATA 3G) is capable of transferring data at a rate of 300MB/s, SATA "3" (i.e. SATA 6G) doubles that amount. You can pull off 600MB/s with 2x SATA "2" drives in RAID 0, or a single SATA 3 drive if it's actually able to get the data out to the interface that quickly.

[cmeeks 8]

Its this one.... My link

I thought only the Mushkins had near 300MB/s write speeds. Seems I was mistaken.

[Superpilotv2 2]

I think SSD´s are a little bit overvalued. Well, they load a little bit faster, but the main piont for Fsx performance is CPU speed. And the´re damned expensive at the moment. I personally would go for an VR drive, either 300 or 600GB.You´ll get a 300Gb VR drive for arround 200$ and a 600GB for 340$. A equivalent 256GB SSD will cost you more than 600$. But if you have the money and are willing to spend it, it´s not my problem, it´s just an idea to save some money, which you could use to get a better cooler or the NGX or something else.