My FS9 Hard Drive has failed. What as replacement?

[martinlest2 58]

My FS9 setup was (horrible use of past tense!) on a 128GB SSD. I was flying along quite happily this afternoon; the first sign of a problem was that my a/c texture would not load in spot view. This happens sometimes, but reappears within 10 seconds at most. This time, the plane stayed grey. So I reloaded the aircraft via the keyboard shortcut. This caused FS9 to hang, so I rebooted.. and to my great joy I saw that the SSD with FS9 on it was no longer there in My Computer. Rebooted.. disconnected and reconnected the drive to the M/B. Same result.

 

Then, to add insult to injury, the PC stopped booting altogether. Well, that's another story: after an hour of this and that I got the PC booting normally again without any reformatting or repairs, but it certainly looks like my FS9 SSD is only fit for the bin.

 

Fortunately (to say the least) I back up all my FS9 installation every few days (via a batch script, so it's very easy to do) and had in fact just backed up before the fateful flight today, so hopefully reinstalling shouldn't be too much of a problem, if all goes OK.

 

I will have to buy another drive for FS9 I suppose though, and hence this post: My O/S is also on a (different) SSD (plus I have two 1TB SATA drives for data), but I am thinking of getting another SATA drive as a replacement and reinstalling FS9 on that, rather than another solid state drive. What do people think? I don't know that the difference is going to be all that noticeable in practice..

 

SATA? SSD? Comments (especially from those with relevant technical data and expertise in this area) welcome,

 

Many thanks,

 

Martin

[martin-w 3,235]

Martin, how old is your SSD? They are usually under warranty for 3-5 years.

 

I' m in the same boat actually but with a mechanical HD.

So any replies would interest me too.

[Appliance 51]

Sorry to learn about your dilemma Martin.

 

I am presently reinstalling FS9 to take advantage of a Win7/64, Haswell system.

 

Not very fashionable I know but I have installed FS9 on a recently released Seagate 1Tb SSHD drive. A hybrid mechanical drive having an 8 gig cache. Dearer than an ordinary SATA hard drive but cheaper than an SSD. It loads FS9 much faster than a HDD ... close to an SSD, in fact.  SATA 3 improves the loading of textures/scenery too. Remember when FS9 was released IDE drives only were available.

 

I am happy with my choice.  I hope you are happy with yours.

[FS++ 708]

 

 

Then, to add insult to injury, the PC stopped booting altogether. Well, that's another story: after an hour of this and that I got the PC booting normally again without any reformatting or repairs, but it certainly looks like my FS9 SSD is only fit for the bin.

 

Maybe it's too early for that option.

 

There are occasions where Windows fails to load simply because you ran out of space on C:\ drive.

 

That 10 seconds delay in loading textures can also be a result of WIndows lacking space on drive to swap things out.

 

You need to leave free space on C: drive at least equivalent to the amount of memory (RAM) installed. If you have 16 GB RAM, then 16 GB free should be available on C: drive. You could go as low as 10 GB, but below that it's lags galore. Whatever it is, don't throw away the FS9 SSD yet. The issue could actually be on the other  SSD Boot drive.

 

Also, try setting your swap files to any of the SATA drives. SSDs don't like frequent writes which is what Windows does all the time with temporary files.

.

[martinlest2 58]

I'll experiment a bit with the 'dead' drive (it's about 3 1/2 years old, so I am pretty sure it will be out of warranty, but I'll double check).. but there is almost 20GBs of space left on the C drive..

 

Maybe a hybrid drive like this would be an idea? It plugs into a SATA3 connector on the M/B? I have one spare (the SSD with my O/S on it is in the other).

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-ST1000DX001-Hybrid-Internal-Solid/dp/B00ELAVIQ0/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1384519109&sr=1-2&keywords=Seagate+1Tb+SSHD+drive

 

What do folks think?

 

The swap file issue (SSD v. SATA/IDE) has contenders on either side. I used to have my paging files on the SATA drives, but I went into a lot of correspondence about this on various 'tech' forums and on balance it seemed best to have them on the O/S (SSD). I can't recall the reasoning now...

[martinlest2 58]

Have ordered that Seagate SSHD drive - but not from the Amazon link I posted, whose partner charges £7 postage! Ordered same from Dabs - who charge 80p!

 

That was 80 pence - 80 .. p, UK £££/ppp. The combination creates a smiley!

[martinlest2 58]

I have now removed the SSD from the PC and hooked it up to my laptop - which doesn't recognise it at all: nothing in Disk Management. I guess I can just ditch it. It failed four months outside of its three-year warranty

 

BTW, I assume I am best plugging the SSHD into one of the grey, Marvell ports, not a standard SATA?