It is his argument about keeping the OS and FSX on separate drives. I do that now with XP and FS9. I just feel more comfortable that way. If there's no monetary difference and the space is the same why would it not be a reasonable alternative?

 

Sure I understood it was his argument but was wondering what the crux of his argument to use two drives over one in the world of fast SSDs is.  Because more people do, I feel, has more to do w/ the legacy practice than the real value.   Single drives make backups very straightforward and always insures you can return your machine to the last backed up point w/o respect for changes on for example the OS drive but not the FSX drive, and therefore insure all pointers to everything in that OS is fully synced w/ everything non-OS.  Whereas in the dual drive model one could have backed up the entire thing on day 1, make a few changes to the OS, add a few new programs, and when the FSX drive fails suddenly prior to the next backup, it's looking at a different image to restore from than what exists now on the OS drive.   This may be mostly a theoretic risk or not even that, but to me I just like the idea of everything in a tidy large single partition.   For everything non-FSX, I use a 250Gb Seagate SATA II 7200 with a 2nd Win 7 install on it.  I have a few games to show off my Titan GTX is all. This way I have no need for any bloat whatsoever on OS+FSX SSD.  No need for A/V software even.  I download any files needed for FSX to the Seagate HDD and of course have that loaded w/ appropriate security, so can then install software from that drive directly into my OS+FSX SSD.  It's a clean & simple model I feel.  When I see how fast everything boots, loads, etc I've obviously got the performance, and with flying as smooth as it is I have to think there is not much happening in a negative way using one drive.  This is why I'd like to hear what the rationale is for the dual drive approach in the era of fast SSDs.

Adding extra should it be necessary is a simple job.

 

OTOH, I think it's idiomatic that it's best to have a matched set so if you decide to go to 32Gb at some point you can pick up 4x 8Gb DIMMS and be good to go.  The thing is though--likely you'll not need the 32Gb.  Alas, it was pretty cheap so I went for it...just in case.  They seem to play well w/ each other as I have the SB-E whose memory controller is supposed support up to 1600Mhz ram.  I think I'm lucky to have 2357Mhz stable w/o much fuss.

Sure I understood it was his argument but was wondering what the crux of his argument to use two drives over one in the world of fast SSDs is. Because more people do, I feel, has more to do w/ the legacy practice than the real value. Single drives make backups very straightforward and always insures you can return your machine to the last backed up point w/o respect for changes on for example the OS drive but not the FSX drive, and therefore insure all pointers to everything in that OS is fully synced w/ everything non-OS. Whereas in the dual drive model one could have backed up the entire thing on day 1, make a few changes to the OS, add a few new programs, and when the FSX drive fails suddenly prior to the next backup, it's looking at a different image to restore from than what exists now on the OS drive. This may be mostly a theoretic risk or not even that, but to me I just like the idea of everything in a tidy large single partition.

 

Your argument for using a single drive appears to be based on the remote possibility that should the drive fail restoring data is a relatively simple action. In 20 years of using PCs I've only had one hard drive fail on me and that was over 10 years ago. Now unless SSDs are far more unreliable than HDDs I think it highly unlikely a SSD will fail in the lifetime I'll keep it. The reason I would prefer two is because I don't want to keep all my eggs in one basket. If the FSX SSD fails my OS is unaffected. Okay, if the OS SSD fails then I'm in the same position as you.

 

I'm presuming you use your FSX PC for all computer related activity albeit with a separate OS boot on a HDD. I have two others - a desktop and a laptop. I use those for downloading, running FS related software via WideFS and internet use. The FSX PC will rarely be used for anything other than flying. So it's not a general purpose PC but one used exclusively for FSX. And I just prefer to keep the OS and FSX on separate drives because reading various articles about FSX that's the most common advice. There's no right and wrong way about this - it's personal preference.

 

 

This is why I'd like to hear what the rationale is for the dual drive approach in the era of fast SSDs.

 

Well I trust my explanation above gives you my reasons.

OTOH, I think it's idiomatic that it's best to have a matched set so if you decide to go to 32Gb at some point you can pick up 4x 8Gb DIMMS and be good to go.  The thing is though--likely you'll not need the 32Gb.  Alas, it was pretty cheap so I went for it...just in case.  They seem to play well w/ each other as I have the SB-E whose memory controller is supposed support up to 1600Mhz ram.  I think I'm lucky to have 2357Mhz stable w/o much fuss.

 

I very much doubt that I'd ever need 32Gb but if I did I'd need to swap out the existing 2 x 8Gb DIMMS for 2 x 16Gb ones. But unless a 64-bit version of P3D comes out it's highly unlikely that will happen.

Well I trust my explanation above gives you my reasons.

 

That is part of my rationale the drive failure part--but mainly it's just the simplicity of it.  I like the fact I will rarely need to do image or clone backups because I don't make a lot of changes often w/ this drive configuration.   I was mainly fishing to see if someone was again touting significant performance advantages which would have flown in the face of what I had gleaned previously.

That is part of my rationale the drive failure part--but mainly it's just the simplicity of it.  I like the fact I will rarely need to do image or clone backups because I don't make a lot of changes often w/ this drive configuration.   I was mainly fishing to see if someone was again touting significant performance advantages which would have flown in the face of what I had gleaned previously.

 

I'm sure there are no significant performance advantages in two drives over one. But as both OS and FSX files will need to be accessed simultaneously it makes sense to spread the workload despite the fact that SSDs are much faster than HDDs. I don't see keeping two drives cloned as any more difficult than one really.

 

If you want to read the guide I found useful it's here although you may have already read it.

http://forum.avsim.net/files/file/1-fsx-hardware-software-guide/

I have Win7 and FSX on different 240GB SSD's. Easier to create and restore seperate partition image backups for an old man like me. System performance will allways be better if Win7 is able to communicate and queu IO with two different devices than with a single IO channel. Would I notice any difference? Probably not with SSD's.

 

One other aspect is that I frequently switch between two different FSX setups, one with FTX Global and another with GEX. This induce frequent and massive writes on the SSD and a faster degrade of the FSX SSD. If I need to replace the FSX SSD, this is easier than replacing a SSD with both OS and FSX.

 

Finally it's cool with all these SSD's and HDD's in the case ;-)

If you want to read the guide I found useful it's here although you may have already read it.

 

Thanks Ray. Best wishes for your new build.

System performance will allways be better if Win7 is able to communicate and queu IO with two different devices than with a single IO channel.

 

Well, if it were a 'single IO channel' that argument would be easier to make, but modern SATA III SSDs typically operate thru 8 channels to the controller. I know the conventional wisdom but I sense it's mainly a holdover from HDD days. SSDs highly exploit I/O parallelism much more than HDDs because of their inherent architecture hence in something like running FSX & Win7, which as an I/O environment I think is fairly light by comparison to high demand server I/O, the 'will always be better' may be largely theoretical in the case of FSX--emphasis on may as I haven't seen anything definitive on this topic one way or the other even in the article Ray linked. Believe me, I'd love to see something definitive.

 

Easier to create and restore seperate partition image backups for an old man like me.

 

Easier than cloning/imaging a single drive? I have a bootable clone of my entire OS/FSX on a single SATA II 7200 HDD so in the unlikely event of a failure i'm running immediately and can clone back when the replacement SSD arrives. I'll have to see how it shakes out if and when the drive gets a little more filled though it likely will never get filled much beyond half full. Even the whole idea of partitioning I think to keep OS in one partition and FSX in another becomes pretty much moot w/ SATA III SSDs. Having data in contiguous sectors was a lot more important when the spinning platters were involved. Now it's just another set of block addresses. I think this is in part why defragmenting SSDs is not very useful anymore as a means of improving performance. That and minimizing writes is always a good thing. I have almost no write activity on my SSD as I have this setup now.

 

Time will tell if my path wasn't the best option. I can say right now I have sterling performance, rapid boot times and load times, and ultra smooth performance. If that changes over time I may have to rethink the approach but for now so far so good. I even did the ultimate bad thing this time thru: I installed FSX into the 'Trusted Folder'. I had always avoided this in the past w/ OS and FSX on separate HDDs, however this time I decided to try the default installation path. Shockingly, haven't had an issue despite all of the 3rd party addons, aircraft, utilities, FSPax, lots of scenery from ORBX, mesh, everything. Haven't had a problem yet!

 

 

Your PC Spec states you have a Asus P5N-E SLI.

Whoooops ... I'd better change that ... thanks Ray.

 

I have recently acquired a MSI Z87-G45 Gaming,, 4770K (4.4) 8 meg 2400, cooled by the Swiftech H220 water cooling kit.

 

If you choose other than MSI RAMdiscs can be purchased separately, the best known one offering a 30 day free trial.

Thanks Ray. Best wishes for your new build.

 

Thanks Noel. I'll keep the forum posted once I take delivery.

 

I think this is in part why defragmenting SSDs is not very useful anymore as a means of improving performance.

 

I thought that was something you should never do. It will shorten its life considerably and doesn't achieve anything.

 

 

If you choose other than MSI RAMdiscs can be purchased separately, the best known one offering a 30 day free trial.

Ah so they're separate to the mobo. I thought they were integral and couldn't find a mention of them when I looked at MSI boards. I'll do some research.

 

 

I thought that was something you should never do. It will shorten its life considerably and doesn't achieve anything.

 

Absolutely.  I was just pointing out defragging SDDs is not necessary even if it didn't shorten its lifespan because all parts of the drive are equally accessible w/ ultra low latency essentially, whereas w/ HDDs the location on the disc matters much more.  All of those tips about how to optimize file layout on the drive mattered then, and defragging mattered too.  Much less so now w/ SSDs.

I don't personally think it's a good idea to totally disable the pagefile - some programs and OS functions write to it regardless of how much RAM you have. It's not some absolute thing that exists solely for when you run out of physical RAM - there's other uses for it. I'd make a reasonably sized one that can be there in case it needs it.

Well, if it were a 'single IO channel' that argument would be easier to make, but modern SATA III SSDs typically operate thru 8 channels to the controller. I know the conventional wisdom but I sense it's mainly a holdover from HDD days. SSDs highly exploit I/O parallelism much more than HDDs because of their inherent architecture hence in something like running FSX & Win7, which as an I/O environment I think is fairly light by comparison to high demand server I/O, the 'will always be better' may be largely theoretical in the case of FSX--emphasis on may as I haven't seen anything definitive on this topic one way or the other even in the article Ray linked. Believe me, I'd love to see something definitive.

I'm very happy to have expert advice on this. I did really believe on those snake oil experts that said that having two separate controllers would increase performance.

 

I would be very happy if you could explain to me how "SSDs highly exploit I/O parallelism much more than HDDs".

I'm very happy to have expert advice on this. I did really believe on those snake oil experts that said that having two separate controllers would increase performance.

 

I would be very happy if you could explain to me how "SSDs highly exploit I/O parallelism much more than HDDs".

 

It's a giant topic and I'm not the one to ask about it, but here is a brief glimmer of the very issue from an Abstract on the topic:

 

 

Flash memory based solid state drives (SSDs) have shown a great potential to change storage infrastructure fundamentally through their high performance and low power. Most recent studies have mainly focused on address- ing the technical limitations caused by special requirements for writes in flash memory. However, a unique merit of an SSD is its rich internal parallelism, which allows us to offset for the most part of the performance loss related to techni- cal limitations by significantly increasing data processing throughput. 

 

There are two inherent architectural limitations in the de- sign of SSDs. First, due to current technical constraints, one single flash memory package can only provide limited bandwidth (e.g. 32-40MB/sec [3]). Second, writes in flash memory are often much slower than reads, and many criti- cal operations, such as garbage collection and wear-leveling [3, 6, 10], can incur latencies as high as milliseconds.

 

To address these limitations, SSD architects have built an ingenious structure to provide internal parallelism – Most SSDs are built on an array of flash memory packages, which are connected through multiple (e.g. 2-10) channels to flash memory controllers. SSDs provide logical block addresses (LBA) as a logical interface to the host. Since logical blocks can be striped over multiple flash memory packages, data accesses can be conducted independently in parallel. Such a highly parallelized design yields two benefits: (1) Trans- ferring data from/to multiple flash memory packages in par- allel can provide high bandwidth in aggregate. (2) High- latency operations can be effectively hidden behind other concurrent operations. Therefore, the internal parallelism, in essence, is not only an inherent functionality but also a basic requirement for SSDs to deliver high performance. 

 

 

Honestly, how much parallelism is a good thing versus a bad thing really depends on what you're doing with it.  I think there is a good argument from what pretty solid sounding testing to suggest getting read & write activities off the same SSD is a good thing so I think can argue for the two drive solution because I know for a fact there is virtually no write activity from FSX alone, whereas w/ the OS running there is always a little write activity happening even though you can keep it minimal.

I don't personally think it's a good idea to totally disable the pagefile - some programs and OS functions write to it regardless of how much RAM you have. It's not some absolute thing that exists solely for when you run out of physical RAM - there's other uses for it. I'd make a reasonably sized one that can be there in case it needs it.

 

So is it advisable to have a fixed size file or to let W7 determine the size? I'm thinking that if you have a fixed one the same blocks will be accessed far more than other parts of the SSD and might shorten its life.

 

I'd locate it on the FSX SSD. If a fixed size what would you suggest?