Has anyone done this successfully and what were the benefits, if any? I have a new computer w/2 HDs and it just occured to me that running fs9 on its own drive might be an option.Comments appreciated!Mark

Things load quicker at startup.That's it.Allcott

Hmmmm...glad I asked!Maybe I'll stick with what I got.

Mark, my recommendation is to put FS9 on a separate partition of Drive 0 at least. I have more fluid performance, better defragmentation options and faster loading. Defragmentation is an important issue, since you want your HD not only defragged but FS9 folder and files also be subsequently located in a certain order on the HDD. For that you need to use both a capable defrag tool and a dedicated space for FS9 files, not to get them mingled with the other files from OS for example. As to a separate Disk for FS9 I am not sure, I prefer a separate partition.Aslo when you want to defrag FS9 only it takes much less time.Dirk.

Also, if your system is properly configured such that the two hd's are on different controllers (both masters) and your swap file is on the first, any access to virtual memory can occur simulataneously with FS accessing it's data - It's a bit faster, but with today's processor speeds, etc, I'm sure you won't even notice.

Mark:Sometime ago I tried this and discovered that I had problems with something regarding VatSim. It has been so long ago, I don't remember whether it was directly in Squawkbox, Roger Wilco, or where, but I ended up installing everything associated with it on the same harddrive with my operating system. Everything else I could, I put on a separate drive.May have been just me, but this was my experience.Good luck:RTH

It might be an idea to experiment with addon scenery on a separate hard drive to FS - on a separate partition but the same drive as the OS. FS doesn't care where the scenery files are so you might get slightly faster disk access in the sim, but at the end of the dday the processor still has to extract and process the same amount of data, so any gains are likely to be minimal in-game, but you should see faster loading times. How much of a gain is difficult to say, Quicker defragging on the first defrag is entirely possible. After that, the total defrag time, including switching the defrag utility to the new partition or drive, rather defeats the object of the exercise - I use Diskeeper Professional to keep my drives defragged, and that ALWAYS runs when I don't have any need for the computer,it makes no difference to me how long it takes! I would say that, as far as Win XP is concerned, a boot-time defrag is actually more important as that is the only way to truly defragment the drive, including the Master File Table and the page file. This cannot be done with the default defragger. Allcott

Hey Dirk,Sounds like a capital idea. I'm assuming the procedure is as follows: Remove Fs9. Create partition.Reinstall fs9 on new partition.Reinstall all scenery/aircraft/utilities (ugh)Mark

I have FS2004 and FS2002 running on diff HD's. I also use the scenery from FS2004 for FS2002 if its compatible. Using scenery menu in FS2002 and browse to scenery folder in FS2004 - saves loading it twice. Also have put scenery on a virtual drive as an experiment and that works OK - but a bit volatile.

Spitting a single hard drive into logical partitions is not going to make things faster, it will just cut back on the amount of fragmentation which means you will not have to defrag as often.Also remember should you do this, you need to relocate the crap that goes into your profile directory which will still be in the other partition.This is an old wives tail ... sitting in the back seat of a car doesn't get you to the destination quicker then sitting in the front seat.If you have separate drives, Raid0 them together. It will outperform shuffling the files around between the drives.A little Raid0 controller is pretty cheap.

What's Raid0?