To the notion you should only ever use 65% of your disc because of access speeds.

By means of some inexpensive defragger I got my archive files (zip, rar and stuff) moved to the centre of my HD and my performance-critical files (like my FSX installation) to the outer "rings".

 

Honestly I never noticed an improvement in loading times or anything else.

 

Regarding the size of the T7 installer, IMO this should not depend on SSD considerations: HD space is very inexpensive, SSDs are just rising and their price will decline, too.

An official (as in "by PMDG") "featured"/"not featured" list linked to a pinned (and locked!) FAQ topic could actually do the trick ...

 

No it won't. The basic requirement would be to read it, something new posters have a hard time doing.

They arrive, they sign up, they post.

 

No searching, no reading, no researching.

To the notion you should only ever use 65% of your disc because of access speeds.

Ah ok.

I had some difficulty understanding the comparison.

 

Well, like I said, I am no hardware specialist so I believe others who are.

I am using SSD now, so the 65% fill rate and name defragging maintenance is past tense for me thank god!

By means of some inexpensive defragger I got my archive files (zip, rar and stuff) moved to the centre of my HD and my performance-critical files (like my FSX installation) to the outer "rings".

 

Honestly I never noticed an improvement in loading times or anything else.

 

Regarding the size of the T7 installer, IMO this should not depend on SSD considerations: HD space is very inexpensive, SSDs are just rising and their price will decline, too.

Performance critical files should be on the inside I think.

Where does the mechanical pickup start when reading, the center?

Like a CD I thought?!

I dont know maybe I am wrong.

 

For a test like that you would have to make sure the HDD is in fact the slowest part in the chain.

If you do a test like that on a system with dog slow CPU or RAM or GPU, you would never see any difference because you are being held back more by other hardware parts anyway.

oh!! i realy hoped there will be a WX radar

Performance critical files should be on the inside I think.

Where does the mechanical pickup start when reading, the center?

 

Hard drive read/write speed is largely limited by rotational speed of the seeker head (e.g. 7200 rpm on regular 3.5" hard drives). For a given angular velocity, the tangential velocity of the seeker head increases with radius. So if you want greatest read/write speed, you want maximum radius, which corresponds to the outer edge of the hard drive. 

 

The seeker head does not really "start" from any where. It starts from where ever it last parked itself. That really doesn't matter much because if you are reading a lot of data that is at the other edges anyway, it will move to the other edges to read file 1, and then already be at the outer edges to read file 2, file 3, etc.

 

 

For a test like that you would have to make sure the HDD is in fact the slowest part in the chain.

If you do a test like that on a system with dog slow CPU or RAM or GPU, you would never see any difference because you are being held back more by other hardware parts anyway.

 

Nowadays, if you run a hard drive performance test, it would be highly unlikely that it would be limited by other components. Look at the "Windows Experience Index" on any computer with only a hard drive and there is a good chance that the lowest score will be the storage device.

 

Also, not sure where you got that 65% rule from; it logically does not make any sense on a well sorted hard drive (with a good third-party defragger). All your fast-access files (game data) go to the outer edges, all other files go after that. The hard drive being full shouldn't affect access times. The only reason you might not want to fill up the hard drive is that if your pagefile is of variable size, you may run out of space for the pagefile - not so much of a concern these days with people running huge amounts of RAM.

David beat me to those explanations ... but I still think there's a good deal of marketing "voodoo" involved in those defragger claims.

 

Anyway, most T7 users will still have HDs, where data storage is rather inexpensive?

I went through my notes.

 

Correct, performance data should be on the outside of the drive.

Because rotational speed is faster there and so is acces to files place there.

 

I cant find why the 65% rule is.

 

Maybe it is so the NAME defragging works better.

I dont know, nor does it matter anymore to me since I have SSD.

 

If I was using HDD however, I know I would stick to the recommendations of a hardware specialist even if I dont know why, so I would not fill it more than 65%, put FSX data on the first partition on the disc, get fast Velociraptors, get as large a disc I could afford (size matters as it increases speed on the outer rings) and use NAME defrag.

 

I dont think the windows performance takes into account the specific needs that FSX has.

Nor do benchmark tests, that show sequential read/write access performance (you need that for movies, AV editing, etc).

FSX uses random acces.

David beat me to those explanations ... but I still think there's a good deal of marketing "voodoo" involved in those defragger claims.

 

Anyway, most T7 users will still have HDs, where data storage is rather inexpensive?

Nope, not just marketing.

 

Name defrag puts all FSX scenery files in Alphabetical order on the disc.

Normal Windows defrag does not.

 

This way when you fly from one scenery tile into the next, those will be next to each other on the disc and the pickup system does not have to go back and forth all over the place to find them.

Concerning the 65% HD rule: The built-into-Windows defragger, IIRC, had a recommended max. of 85%. 3rd party defraggers brag they can still defrag with an even higher utilization.

 

Anyway, my next (2nd) mass storage device will probably be a SSD - the later I buy the less expensive it gets ...

SSD is definately the way to go.

Faster and no maintenance at all.

 

Best thing I ever bought.

 

I have a 256Gb SSD for both Win7 and FSX. (dont have too many addons though).

 

 

Anyway, I found a piece about HDD performance and I think you (David) are right.

You can fill more than 65% but the high performance data should be on the outside.

 

I think in the info I read we were talking about an FSX dedicated PC.

So only FSX data on the disc.

In that case you would not want to fill more then 65%.

And I think that is because the more data you put on, the more it has to go to the inside where rotational speed and thus read speed becomes slower and slower.

 

Putting movies on that slow part of the HDD should not hurt I think.

There is no advantage in where the file is on the disk. Linear velocity is greater at the disk edge, but the circumference is greater too. So the time to find a given file depends on angular velocity not linear velocity. If the file has just passed under the head it will take a whole revolution to read it.

Correct for the speed of positioning the head, but not for the speed of reading the data (once positioned).

 

To add to the confusion(?), some defraggers are capable of "consolidating" files, so files which are read one after the other will be positioned "in line" during defragmentation. This is supposed to decrease repositioning time.

There is no advantage in where the file is on the disk. Linear velocity is greater at the disk edge, but the circumference is greater too. So the time to find a given file depends on angular velocity not linear velocity. If the file has just passed under the head it will take a whole revolution to read it.

@KevinH:

 

Yes there is, you are wrong.

 

Like I said, I am not a specialist.

And when I pass things on that are not correct or not completely accurate I am open for a revised opinion. See above.

 

When everybody is posting as if they are specialists it realy makes things complicated and impossible to tell who is right and who is not.

 

It would help if everybody would just say...I think bla bla.....or although I am no specialist, bla bla....

This way we all know it is a nonexpert opinion.

 

Now we have people stating things as facts where they are in fact bogus!

And without the "I think" or "I am no specialist" note it is impossible to tell if the info comes from a good source or not.

That is annoying.

 

But probably not going to change.

 

Which is why I turn to only one guy when it comes to hardware info!

@KevinH:

 

Yes there is, you are wrong.

 

Like I said, I am not a specialist.

And when I pass things on that are not correct or not completely accurate I am open for a revised opinion. See above.

 

When everybody is posting as if they are specialists it realy makes things complicated and impossible to tell who is right and who is not.

 

It would help if everybody would just say...I think bla bla.....or although I am no specialist, bla bla....

This way we all know it is a nonexpert opinion.

 

Now we have people stating things as facts where they are in fact bogus!

And without the "I think" or "I am no specialist" note it is impossible to tell if the info comes from a good source or not.

That is annoying.

 

But probably not going to change.

 

Which is why I turn to only one guy when it comes to hardware info!

Hmmm, you say I'm wrong but don't seem to know why. What I said was not wrong. See the post above yours, as I was talking about the time to find a file. There is a difference in read time, but I'm not convinced it makes any noticeable difference in practice.

ok.

That's fine.

 

We are both convinced then.

Let's just leave it at that.

 

Everybody should do as he thinks is best.