Hello,Last time here and there I read something about the SSD's, the Solid State Drivers. The SSD is a kind of a drive but works much faster than a regular drive. You can see it as an extra drive (like a D:// or E://). Correct me if wrong!- Now my questions:What will a SSD exaclty do with FSX, if FSX has been installed at the SSD ofcourse. A problem if you just install Win7 at a regular drive and ONLY install FSX stuff at the SSD? And last, how many GB is needed/recommend? I think, when using more add-ons -> bigger SSD.I think a SSD of 40GB would we well. How do you guys see against these new SSD's? Do you recommend it? Good experience with it?Show of your opinion if you want! =)Kind regards,Steven

A solid state drive (not driver) is a hard drive that uses flash memory instead of a mechanic spinning disk. These are fast becoming the standard - in another couple years mechanical HDs are probably going to be on their way out permanently.They function exactly like a normal HD does, but they're very very fast because it's essentially a giant RAM drive. SSDs do NOT improve your framerate, but they will massively improve the general responsiveness of the computer because they essentially eliminate most program launch/load times. An SSD allows Windows to boot in less than 10 seconds and the desktop is totally ready to go the instant it appears - there's no waiting for all the background stuff to load off a mechanical drive. In FSX, an SSD will translate to faster loading of the sim and less chance of stuttering as textures and whatnot stream in while you're flying. Program installs also go much faster because there's no write speed bottleneck.The downside is that larger SSDs are still quite expensive. They're working on getting the prices and sizes down, but it's going to take time and further techological breakthroughs to do. If you can afford it though, it's a huge huge improvement if you can get one large enough to put Windows and FS on.

Wauw, great information and quick response Ryan. Many thanks, also for the video by the way. But it won't be a problem if you just keep your Windows installed at a mechanic hard disk and your FSX at a SSD. It's compatible?

I have an ssd for my OS and one for FSX plus 3 mech drives for other stuff.Ryan's response is spot on.Chris Farrell

Yes, its compatible.

A friend of mine lend me his new SSD, an OCZ Vertex 2 160GB and I cloned my W7 + FSX there... no gain in FPS, and it wasn't smoother or anything either. Tried to push traffic to the max in massively dense scenery and it would stutter just like my Vrap installation does. No more no less.No wonder the system was overall a lot faster and all, but I couldn't see the benefits in FSX that others have. Not saying it's not true, but the in the limited time I had to test it I didn't notice anything worth to mention

A friend of mine lend me his new SSD, an OCZ Vertex 2 160GB and I cloned my W7 + FSX there... no gain in FPS, and it wasn't smoother or anything either. Tried to push traffic to the max in massively dense scenery and it would stutter just like my Vrap installation does. No more no less.No wonder the system was overall a lot faster and all, but I couldn't see the benefits in FSX that others have. Not saying it's not true, but the in the limited time I had to test it I didn't notice anything worth to mention

What did you clone the other drive onto the SSD with? There's a concept called partition alignment that's really big with SSDs - it can slow them down pretty drastically if the cloning software uses the alignment parameters normally used for mechanical drives. Not many support alignment, I know Acronis doesn't. When RSR got his SSDs we had to first format the drives and partition them with the Win7 DVD (which sets the correct offset) and only then clone to the already existing partitions, which preserves the alignment.

What did you clone the other drive onto the SSD with? There's a concept called partition alignment that's really big with SSDs - it can slow them down pretty drastically if the cloning software uses the alignment parameters normally used for mechanical drives. Not many support alignment, I know Acronis doesn't. When RSR got his SSDs we had to first format the drives and partition them with the Win7 DVD (which sets the correct offset) and only then clone to the already existing partitions, which preserves the alignment.

When upgrading my system, part of it was a 300GB WD velociraptor to replace the 128GB SSD I had. I can tell a definite delay in boot time, not much but noticeable, maybe a few seconds... I can't speak for FSX performance difference because I also upgraded the PSU, MB, CPU & video card(s).EDIT: That being said, I was very happy with my SSD. It did what I wanted & boot times / program startup times were very fast. I just wanted to save a bit of cash after ordering 2 GTX580's & went with a conventional HD instead of a ginormous & who knows how expensive SSD.

What did you clone the other drive onto the SSD with? There's a concept called partition alignment that's really big with SSDs - it can slow them down pretty drastically if the cloning software uses the alignment parameters normally used for mechanical drives. Not many support alignment, I know Acronis doesn't. When RSR got his SSDs we had to first format the drives and partition them with the Win7 DVD (which sets the correct offset) and only then clone to the already existing partitions, which preserves the alignment.

I use Acronis 2010 and it was a PITA because of the partition alignment issue. Finally what did the trick was to copy the C: partition itlself with Acronis (previously formated the SSD in W7 like Robert did), without the MBR, then add the MBR and the partition remained aligned. I then used the registry hack to enable AHCI and backed it up, even run a secure erase, then restored the complete image backup and it kept the alignment, obviously. The partition was properly aligned (1024K) and tested with ATTO, the transfer rates where very close to 280MB/s both R/W as expected. unless I'm missing somethin, everything seemed to be ok with the SSD

What did you clone the other drive onto the SSD with? There's a concept called partition alignment that's really big with SSDs - it can slow them down pretty drastically if the cloning software uses the alignment parameters normally used for mechanical drives. Not many support alignment, I know Acronis doesn't. When RSR got his SSDs we had to first format the drives and partition them with the Win7 DVD (which sets the correct offset) and only then clone to the already existing partitions, which preserves the alignment.

One thing to add for all the new SSD users out there: Whether installing W7 from scratch and using as a new drive, or cloning an old drive, you must format the drive through W7. If you don't do this, the advertised read/write speeds won't be anywhere close to what you actually get. Very important: format the drive via W7.If you are not getting the advertised speeds, try this before giving up. Also, make sure that you look at what the advertised speeds are. Drives vary in speeds from 110-375 MB/s read. I think it really depends on if it is a quality brand or not, but there may be other factors as well. I use corsair btw.

I still would like to know if say one 80GB SSD is better or worse than two 40GB SSDs. There was someone claiming that if I have one 40GB SSD and put the OS on it and another 40GB only for FSX I will achieve better overall bandwidth than if I had a single SSD of double capacity.

I still would like to know if say one 80GB SSD is better or worse than two 40GB SSDs. There was someone claiming that if I have one 40GB SSD and put the OS on it and another 40GB only for FSX I will achieve better overall bandwidth than if I had a single SSD of double capacity.

SSDs, unlike HDDs, don't decrease in performance as they fill up. So from a space point of view, that shouldn't be a problem. ie. You could have a 40 gig drive with 5 or 35 gig on it, and there won't be a speed difference. I don't know what you mean by bandwidth. Sorry. Hope my answer helps a bit.

What about fault tolerance? Do these drives lend themselves to RAID arrays? Billy Workman

I don't know what you mean by bandwidth. Sorry.

I recall he meant that because of multi-CPU setup in todays's PCs one CPU could talk to one SSD while at the same time another CPU would talk to another SSD (say there is OS related read overlapping in time FSX related read). I don't know enough about hardware to judge if this makes any sense.

What about fault tolerance? Do these drives lend themselves to RAID arrays? Billy Workman

Problem is RAID setups do not support TRIM