Hello,

 

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I have just purchased the following:

 

• CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMD16GX3M2A1600C9

 

• Intel Core i7-4770 Haswell 3.4GHz LGA 1150 84W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80646I74770

 

• Motherboard Asus Z87-A Intel® Socket 1150 for 4^th Generation Core™ i7/Core™

 

• Asus Geforce GTX 780 3GB

I am going to buy 3 SSD Samsung drives (hopefully 500GB ones) at the weekend. I intend to put Windows 7 Ulyimate 64 on one drive and leave it alone (never installing anything on it, just using it for the operating system)

 

FSX on another drive

 

Addon scenery on the third drive.

 

Addon programs: REX essential (not sure where to put this) GTX  programs on a network PC

 

Will it benefit me to have the scenery on the third SSD drive? Any other suggestions I will appreciate. I scared sh....less about overclocking my processor. Is it easy to do? Am I in danger of screwing it up? Where do I begin?

 

Thank you.

 

Paul

 

IMO, 3x512GB SSD's are overkill. The only benefit with putting FSX on a SSD is *slightly* faster initial loading time when you first start the flight. Is it really worth hundreds of dollars to reduce the initial loading time by 8 seconds?

 

If you're going to dedicate one SSD to just the OS, 256GB would be a good size. 128GB would work, but 256GB gives you room to grow. If you absolutely must install FSX and addons on SSD storage, a single 512GB SSD would be enough.

 

Some options I would consider:

 

256GB SSD: OS+a few small applications

512GB SSD: FSX+Addons

1 - 4 TB HDD: storage of addon installers etc.

 

-or-

 

256GB SSD: OS+a few small applications

1- 4TB HDD: FSX+Addons

1 - 4 TB HDD # 2: storage of addon installers etc.

 

-or-

 

512GB SSD: OS, applications, FSX+add-ons

1-4TB HDD: Backup of your 512GB SSD using True Image or similar, storage of addon installers etc.

 

Additionally I would back up regularly to e.g. a large USB 3.0 external drive.

Hi Jimmy,

 

Thank you for your reply. 

 

Paul

I am going to buy 3 SSD Samsung drives (hopefully 500GB ones) at the weekend. I intend to put Windows 7 Ulyimate 64 on one drive and leave it alone (never installing anything on it, just using it for the operating system)

 

With SATA III SSDs there isn't much of an argument for putting OS & FSX on separate drives as there was in the past when HDD's were involved when CPU utilization, access times and simultaneous read requests made the case for separate OS & FSX. I have a different tact for my setup and it works perfectly and is ultra smooth, rapid boot & load times, etc:

 

Disk0: Win 7 Pro + FSX + All Addons on a single 500Gb Samsung 840: 338Gb free currently and all that I will be adding is FTX-G and the 777--everything else is loaded already, and there will still be ample room for future upgrades to FSX in terms of addons. If P3D version 2 looks compelling I'll wipe the drive and start over w/ P3D & Win7, or perhaps pick up another 500Gb 840 and use the same approach. Nice to have a bootable cloned backup rather than an image IMO and when OS & FSX are on the same drive there is no need to do synchronized cloning.

Disk1: Win 7 Pro on a HDD. This drive is used for all other Windows software, web browsing, a few games, etc. You could use an SDD for this of course.

DIsk2: Data only on another HDD. The Windows swap file lives on this drive, though paging almost doesn't happen in my system when I look thru perfmon.exe.

Disk3: is a 1-2y/o hardly used 500Gb HDD which I used to clone Disk0 to using Paragon Migrate OS to SSD 3.0.

 

To keep any SSD healthy you need to be assured TRIM is enabled in Win 7, you should minimize write operations to it by for example moving the swap file off of it, disabling hibernation, disabling Windows Search and so forth. Putting Win7 OS only on a 500Gb SSD seems pretty odd! What is the rationale for this?

 

I don't use the SSD for anything except FSX therefore I don't need any other bloatware whatsoever, including antivirus etc. I surf the web from the Disk1 boot and store files I might be installing into FSX or for FSX on the commonly accessible data drive.

 

Provided you keep your SSD clean as described above I don't think you're going to see anything significant in terms of performance by configuring your drives they way you thought this thru have over putting everything for FSX on a single large SSD w/ OS. If you're still not convinced you might save some $$ and put Win 7 on a smaller drive. If you're really serious about only Win7 on the drive there is no way you need more than 128Gb unless you don't really mean 'only'.

 

Just another way to do it but I would argue performance will be virtually the same in our two approaches because of the way SDDs work over HDDs. Were I to use Win 7 other than for a few other games I wouldn't have bothered w/ the 2nd OS install on to Disk1. I use a MacBook Pro for most all other basic computing.

Hi Noel,

 

Thank you for your reply. If I understand you correctly should I just put the OS on asingle HDD drive and Prepar3d on the SSD with scenery files o the the other free SSD? If this is the case do I need to do anything with the swap file? I am not sur how to move it or where to move it? Does Prepar3d depend heavly on the OS when running? I thought the idea of putting it on the SSD drive would help Prepard3d run more smoothly.

 

Paul

Hi Noel

 

I understand that you've TWO Win7 installs ? Could you elaborate on the rationale of having the second one (disk1) ?