Re: SSD's Downside to picking up a larger one and keeping OS and FSX . . .

[Noel 119]

. . . and every program I use one drive, creating a 2nd partition on it for another OS installation. This sounds to me like much easier to manage file system than having things on the 4 HDDs I am using now. Please let me know if there are any downsides to using only one larger drive. I would end up keeping data only on a 2nd HDD since . . . I have so many of them ;o)Thanks in advance!Noel

[Guest jahman]

Multiple drives mean Windows (and FSX) can read files simultaneously thus increasing the BW available from only a single drive.Cheers,- jahman.

[Noel 119]

Multiple drives mean Windows (and FSX) can read files simultaneously thus increasing the BW available from only a single drive.Cheers,- jahman.

This logic applies to SSD's as well? I'm wondering if because there is no need to wait for a mechanical reader to become available for the next disk i/o operation that the SSD could read/write w/o the need for much in the way of wait states, and so improve performance in this regard significantly over single HDD performance, and when you factor in higher read/write rates you're going to do so much better w/ even a single SSD over two HDD's. Does that fit with your understanding?

[Guest jahman]

This logic applies to SSD's as well?...

Yes.With 2 SSDs, for example, you could be simultaneously loading photo-real scenery from one and elevation data from the other.Cheers,- jahman.

[Noel 119]

Yes.With 2 SSDs, for example, you could be simultaneously loading photo-real scenery from one and elevation data from the other.Cheers,- jahman.

Can you think of an example where the user is not using photo-real scenery? Unless you can install parts of FSX that are both called on simultaneously from each SSD how can you gain much using two SSD's over one? I'm still not seeing where much improvement could come from. I would think it would depend on how much read demand comes from the OS versus FSX. If the OS requires maybe 10% of the total read/write capacity of the SSD, and FSX gobbles up the other 90%, then putting FSX on a second SSD will only get you around 10% improvement in disk operation. I'm assuming a single SSD can respond to whatever demands are out there to the max burst and continuous, no matter where it is coming from, since as I say there is no moving parts to have to wait for, no?

[Guest jahman]

OK, in the example I gave, instead of photoreal scenery say "Landclass and Ground Textures".Cheers,- jahman.

[Noel 119]

OK, in the example I gave, instead of photoreal scenery say "Landclass and Ground Textures".Cheers,- jahman.

I think land class has a relatively tiny foot print. Setting up FSX to run land class from one drive and ground textures from another seems like it would offer little in the way of improved file loading. Do you have land class on one drive, and textures on another? Your argument still seems kinda weak, but thanks for trying!

[Guest jahman]

I don't have to prove anything, I'm just trying to help out. And it's not just ground textures, it's aircraft and weather and AI DLLs etc, as well as FSX itself and the OS.Cheers,- jahman.

[tutmeister 169]

If you have the money, a smaller 60GB purely for your OS and a larger one (depending on how large your install is) purely for FSX would be your best option for performance.All third party software such as ACARS software, FS Commander, FS Build, all those nice little apps that continually read and write to a cached file would benefit from being on the 7200RPM HDD as it takes away from using the bandwidth of the SSD during the course of its duties in running the OS and FSX, respectively. If you can offload the pressure of performing other tasks from the SSD, then common sense tells you the performance of the drive will be focusing on the main task of the OS and FSX.

[Noel 119]

I don't have to prove anything, I'm just trying to help out. And it's not just ground textures, it's aircraft and weather and AI DLLs etc, as well as FSX itself and the OS.Cheers,- jahman.

jahman, I'm trying to tease out accurate information I can apply. Thank you for trying to help out, I appreciate it.Over n out . . .

[Noel 119]

If you have the money, a smaller 60GB purely for your OS and a larger one (depending on how large your install is) purely for FSX would be your best option for performance.All third party software such as ACARS software, FS Commander, FS Build, all those nice little apps that continually read and write to a cached file would benefit from being on the 7200RPM HDD as it takes away from using the bandwidth of the SSD during the course of its duties in running the OS and FSX, respectively. If you can offload the pressure of performing other tasks from the SSD, then common sense tells you the performance of the drive will be focusing on the main task of the OS and FSX.

I've always assumed this benefit in the realm of HDDs. The reason I ask is that, if the total demand for file loading at any one moment is within the maximum read capacity of the single SSD isn't it conceivable that an additional device may not add much? I imagine that HDD's, because of their nature of relying upon spinning disks and read/write heads may end up demonstrating more benefit from this serial processing approach, whereas my fantasy about how SSD's work seem like it might be possible to hit the maximum read capacity much quicker than w/ HDDs, and so avoid any bottlenecking that might come from more disk read demand than is currently able to be addressed. But as I say, it's fantasy because I don't have a good enough understanding of the real issues. Have you witnessed significant differences yourself, using a single SSD versus OS on one HDD and FSX on an SSD? The reason I ask is that I think it would be a snap to make one disk image of an SSD versus needing to have both and HDD and SSD backed up at the same time always, and I'm very much disinterested in RAID configurations etc. I think if the real world diff in perf between one model and the other is not that great I would clearly prefer one SSD, even at the expense of some small to modest performance loss.

[Guest jahman]

Most backup software allows saving a list of drives and folders to backup so no, it's not a big deal to backup multiple drives.Cheers,- jahman.

[Noel 119]

Most backup software allows saving a list of drives and folders to backup so no, it's not a big deal to backup multiple drives.Cheers,- jahman.

Sure, however I'd much prefer one device that handles the issue adequately. This desire for simplicity seems to be accompanying my aging years ;o)

[tutmeister 169]

Well, the arguments are many and diverse, so this is purely my opinion. I haven't worked this out scientifically, merely using common sense and it works for me:If you use one SSD for the OS and one SSD for FSX, you can image the drive at the point where you know everything is fresh and working, and drivers are up to date, etc.Then if you run into issues you can simply re-install the image of OS by wiping the drive and loading the image to it. No need to worry about files from either a program or the OS being in another place.The same for the drive with FSX.In this configuration, performance has been a none issue. By that I mean I haven't run into anywhere that taxes my recent build, even with complex addons such as ORBX scenery and the PMDG 737NGX running alongside various 3rd party apps for planning, weather and the like. The short answer: You could easily partition one SSD and do the same as I do above, just be aware that both the OS and FSX are having to use the bandwidth of the same drive and so potentially, it will perform sub-optimally, although that will likely still be much better than a partition on a regular HDD. If you can get a 6GB/s SATA SSD and actually run it through a 6GB/s port, not a 3GB/s port, then you'll likely have no issues whatsoever.

[Noel 119]

The short answer: You could easily partition one SSD and do the same as I do above, just be aware that both the OS and FSX are having to use the bandwidth of the same drive and so potentially, it will perform sub-optimally, although that will likely still be much better than a partition on a regular HDD. If you can get a 6GB/s SATA SSD and actually run it through a 6GB/s port, not a 3GB/s port, then you'll likely have no issues whatsoever.

So I guess that is a SATA 3 SSD, i.e. a 6GB/s drive? OK that sounds like something worth looking in to. I still like the idea of having only one drive so I will look into this approach. What should I look for in the way of mainboard specs to insure I have a 6GB/s port?

[tutmeister 169]

Yes, SATA revision 3 boasts 6 Gigabits per second (Gbit/s or Gb/s, not GB/s - my bad from earlier posts), resulting in access speeds approaching double that of 3Gb/s SATA drives. What you need to ensure is any potential candidate to be your motherboard, or mainboard, has a native 6Gb/s SATA controller. You'll have to research that yourself, but I can tell you that my motherboard works well enough, an ASUS P8Z68 V-Pro. Any SATA III drive will work great, I prefer OCZ's pickings, as they have been continuously ranked high with benchmarks by MaximumPC magazine, while their price isn't much different than the competition.

[Noel 119]

Yes, SATA revision 3 boasts 6 Gigabits per second (Gbit/s or Gb/s, not GB/s - my bad from earlier posts), resulting in access speeds approaching double that of 3Gb/s SATA drives. What you need to ensure is any potential candidate to be your motherboard, or mainboard, has a native 6Gb/s SATA controller. You'll have to research that yourself, but I can tell you that my motherboard works well enough, an ASUS P8Z68 V-Pro. Any SATA III drive will work great, I prefer OCZ's pickings, as they have been continuously ranked high with benchmarks by MaximumPC magazine, while their price isn't much different than the competition.

Thank you Paul I will look into those features. I am contemplating waiting til Ivy Bridge and PCIe 3 graphics cards so will need to see what mainboards on those parts. I have no clue on memory yet. I don't do upgrades very often so am inclined to buy top end parts each time now rather than bother w/ incremental upgrades. So highest end memory that works and a good SSD. Haven't seen the definitive testing on the idea of two SSD's versus one SATA III SSD. I can't imagine there will be bandwidth issues, and methinks an SSD can read any parts of the drive at any time provided the bandwidth isn't saturated, which I think won't be the case w/ these drives. Right now I'm using a 7200rpm for my OS, and a 10K drive for FSX. I have to think requests sent to an SSD would be responded to synchronously if FSX demanded it. If something beyond theory, or even a better theory comes along, I'm game to consider two SSD's, but as I say, I'd be happiest w/ one if there is no significant diff between the two approaches.

[scott967 25]

Right now I am running at 100Gb for Win 7 + FSX on an OCZ Vertex III 120. I have my AI aircraft on HD though. If I get much fuller I might get another 60 and put some scenery on there. I figure time is on my side cost/performance wise. This is probably my last Sandforce controller SSD though.scott s..

[Noel 119]

Right now I am running at 100Gb for Win 7 + FSX on an OCZ Vertex III 120. I have my AI aircraft on HD though. If I get much fuller I might get another 60 and put some scenery on there. I figure time is on my side cost/performance wise. This is probably my last Sandforce controller SSD though.scott s..

Scott, why last Sandforce controller SSD? I don't know anything about these things so any help is appreciated. Again, money is no object! Just get me the very best of the very best!

[scott967 25]

Scott, why last Sandforce controller SSD? I don't know anything about these things so any help is appreciated. Again, money is no object! Just get me the very best of the very best!

Sandforce has had some QA problems with their firmware. Though they were just bought by LSI Logic, so maybe in the future things will change. At any rate, my OCZ Vertex III will BSOD windows about twice a week. After which the system can't see the SSD until you power-cycle. OCZ has released a series of firmware updates trying to fix. The current one is 2.15 and seems to have worked for some but I'm not sure it fixes all problems. Thing is the recommended method is to flash the new firmware, then do a secure erase of the drive, then clear motherboard CMOS, then reboot and then setup your BIOS again. You might need to change hot swap settings in BIOS, TRIM settings in Win7, etc if that doesn't work.scott s..

[Noel 119]

Ugg! I don't think I want to play with something that is that on the edge of failure. Are there other SSD's/controllers that are rock solid and can do 6Gbps