Hi Steve, I'm using an SSD for BOOT/FSX and I read about you saying you were using the Marvell storage port instead of Intel. Mine was installed in the computer when I bought it.When starting up I can see it's using the Marvell port. Can I change this easily? Did you change it in the BIOS? Would be nice to gain some speed!Ype Reitsma

Ype- very good question....for me I did some benchmarks and found that the drive was performing much slower than rated...approx 350MB/s vs the 550MB/s seq read....I did some research and found a thread in a forum where someone said Marvell...bad...Intel....good....not much of an explanation. I referred to my mobo manual and found that the intel ports are brown vs. the marvell ports which are gray. Simply switched it and presto improved performance...(along with a 6gb/s cable).hope that is helpful

Steve-Welcome to the SSD club.Last October I grew frustrated with how long it takes to load FSX (especially when debugging... it isn't uncommon to launch the simulation 50x each day..) and with some help from Ryan I settled on adding to SSDs to my development machine.We arm wrestled with it a bit- but finally got the boot sector onto one SSD and FSX onto another.Like you observed- I go from power on to a login screen in about 10 seconds...Reboots take about 18 seconds....But the best part is that launching the NGX in debug mode at Orbx PNW KRNT takes at MOST 18 seconds....That probably saved me a week or two of development time on the NGX. LOL

yeah pretty much the loading of anything is ridiculously fast now. Outside of FSX, maps in Battlefield 3 are now loading in like 8 seconds....so I'm almost always spawning first in the chopper pilot seat....too bad those flying skills don't translate back to the NGX all that muchMust say you've got a great product....def reinvigorated my interest in flight sim and pretty much has single-handedly led me to all of these pc upgrades + hardware/software add-ons.

Ype- very good question....for me I did some benchmarks and found that the drive was performing much slower than rated...approx 350MB/s vs the 550MB/s seq read....I did some research and found a thread in a forum where someone said Marvell...bad...Intel....good....not much of an explanation. I referred to my mobo manual and found that the intel ports are brown vs. the marvell ports which are gray. Simply switched it and presto improved performance...(along with a 6gb/s cable).hope that is helpful

Thanks a million Steve. Got the same mobo so it's worth to give it a try!Ype Reitsma

What did you do with the old drive that you transported everything from?Also hasn't FSX got loads of files dotted around the place?For example, I have a D: Drive with JUST FSX on it, how would I move it to the SSD? And is it worth having 2, one for windows and one for FSX, or put it on the same one?All the best!Alex

Ahh... Just looking at SSD right now, what kind of thing am I looking for when looking at SSDs? Also further to the question above if it makes any difference having the OS on the one drive so say 1 SSD with both Win7 64bit and FSX. Cheers guys. - Looking at this http://www.ebuyer.com/268693-corsair-120gb-force-3-ssd-cssd-f120gb3-bk-cssd-f120gb3-bk - do you think it would do the job? I intend to only have Win7 and FSX with addon's on it, I use a macbook for all my personal computing (Mac fan geek at heart!)   

I retained all of my 'static' files on the old drive ie. docs, pics, music, docs, backups, etc. The key here is you want to retain whatever drive letter your FSX is on now. So if you have FSX on drive D, it seems plausible that you could buy one SSD and logically partition it to retain C as the OS and D with FSX although i have not looked into it. If you don't you will have to reinstall FSX completely.I basically bought some piece of mind by getting a drive large enough for my OS plus fit all programfiles folder, so my FSX, REX, GEX, various scenery,etc all moved. And for those of you who use REX you'll be pleasantly surprised as to how fast a theme can install textures now. As far as I know the only other thing that FSX looks at is your AppData folder of the fsx.cfg so I made sure that went over as well. Don't know of any other folders/files it needsIf you look at the drive in my sig, it had a pretty high read/write speed and Tom's hardware put it at a 'tier 1' level. Plus it seemed to have a recent price drop (USD$359) so I grabbed it. If you search you will find various benchmarks rating these drives.

Well, being SSD user for couple years now, I will just tell you: don't expect wonders.Yes, your OS will load faster. But you need to consider:- If you are planning to put both OS and FSX on the same drive you might face space problem at some stage (I had it on a 200GB drive, with W7, FSX and all add-ons.)- The SSD gurus advice for keeping at least 30% free on the SSD drives for performance.- The FSX load times will improve to the moment where you have tons of add-ons and photo scenery. Then your SSD might fall sometimes into long wondering waits during load.- For maintaining your drive you might want to visit the manufacturer site for useful tips.

- The SSD gurus advice for keeping at least 30% free on the SSD drives for performance.

Most of the advice I read recommends 10%.Still sat on fence regarding this. Thinking of OCZ Vertex 3 120GB with both Win7 64 and FSX. I can keep my other 6 SATA drives for backups, game installations etc. I have SATA 3 motherboard but not sure whether £150 is a good investment just yet.Especially with Santa Claus visit to the family fast approaching.....

Ype- very good question....for me I did some benchmarks and found that the drive was performing much slower than rated...approx 350MB/s vs the 550MB/s seq read....I did some research and found a thread in a forum where someone said Marvell...bad...Intel....good....not much of an explanation. I referred to my mobo manual and found that the intel ports are brown vs. the marvell ports which are gray. Simply switched it and presto improved performance...(along with a 6gb/s cable).hope that is helpful

Marvell ports are o.k. for CD/DVD etc.Buck Bolduc