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.

Well, on most motherboards, SATA devices are controlled by either a dedicated SATA controller, or the chipset. (For those who are not very familiar with computer hardware, the chipset is completely different than the CPU.) In either case, the CPU doesn't really "talk" directly to the SSD. So, based on my knowledge, this claim doesn't really hold much water. Of course, I am hearing this third person, so there may be some discrepancies between what your friend actually meant. I would say though, that whether you have them on the same drive or on different drives the difference will be negligible if any. I have used two 60 GB drives, one with OS and one with FSX. I now use one 120 GB drive with both the OS and FSX on it, and I don't notice a difference. The load times of everything are still wicked fast. SSDs are relatively new, thus my knowledge of them is not abounding, so if anyone would like to correct, please do so. This info is accurate to the best of my knowledge, however.

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 don't think this is true - the partition alignment just needs to be right - that's what causes the slow read/write speeds with certain methods that don't align it correctly. The Win7 CD does align them correctly, that's why. Anything that can align it correctly should be fine.

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

Turn off "File Indexing" (right click drive letter ->properties) and scheduled defrag with SSDs. My favorite characteristics - super quick program installation times especially when you need to do a fresh install as well as the quick boot/load times. No significant gains in FSX compared to very fast hard drives.

I don't think this is true - the partition alignment just needs to be right - that's what causes the slow read/write speeds with certain methods that don't align it correctly. The Win7 CD does align them correctly, that's why. Anything that can align it correctly should be fine.

Ahh, I see. Thanks for your input Ryan. So it really has to do with the alignment, nice to know!

Personally, I think adding SSD's to my setup was one of the biggest returns for me in terms of overall PC and sim satisfaction. The OS (and FSX) loads very quickly, menus just pop without delay, and FSX textures load almost instantaneously. Even though framerates may not be much improved, the performance enhancements otherwise are just too great to ignore. This coming from someone who had two Velociraptors previously. When you go from 7-8 ms access time to 0.1 ms or less, it's hard not to notice a significant difference overall.

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

Each drive connection has a certain bandwidth capability. In the case of SATA2, max theoretical speed is 300 MBps, or 2.4 Gbps (8 bits in the byte). This is the total bandwidth.Throughput is not the same - this is a measure of how much data was actually transferred in any given unit of time.Throughput may not exceed bandwidth, and rarely reaches it. Burst transfers are most likely to reach peak throughput. Factors that affect maximum throughput include the protocol(s) required to run the link.Not sure what is meant by alignment affecting SSDs. SSDs (and in fact, any solid state memory device) is affected by block size and cluster size (disks are too, but not to the same degree).What is block size? Block size is the smallest unit of data (e.g. 4096 bytes) on the medium.What is cluster size? A cluster is the smallest unit of data that be written on a file system (e.g. 4096 bytes). If we write 1 byte to a file for example, then regardless, it will occupy 4096 bytes of space. If we add a second byte to the file, it will still occupy 4096 bytes. Only when the file is 4097 bytes long, will it occupy 2 clusters, which will then mean our 4097 byte file occupies 8192 bytes of space. Rinse and repeat.It would seem, from reading around, that the typical block size of an SSD is e.g. 4096 bytes. By making the cluster size equal to the block size, you have optimized the file system read/write to coincide with the disk read/write size. It is optimum for the disk, but it may not be optimum for the application.As you can see from the cluster size, if you deal with small files, it can be highly inefficient to have a large cluster size. It also promotes fragmentation (only an issue if you are constantly writing/deleting data).A smaller cluster size of some multiple of the block size should not be detrimental to performance, but a cluster size larger than the block size will reduce the capacity of the disk (as will writing lots of small files to large clusters), and will promote fragmentation.If all you do is flight sim, then a cluster size equal to the block size would be sufficient.Best regards,Robin.