i have recently been having problems with flight simulator and as a resulted i have decided to get an SSD to give me a slight performance upgrade and any help with this would be great. This SSD will only be for FSX and addons.  I am looking at a 240gb SSD to accommodate all of my addons, REX, PMDG, My Traffic, 50+ payware airports etc, firstly I am wondering if 240gb will be enough and i am also wondering how the SSD works. By this i mean do i need to install my OS (windows 7) onto it? I already have a normal 1tb hard drive with windows 7 on. any help with this and any other helpful pointers would be great because although i am pretty experienced with most flight simulator aspects i am not sure how to set up an SSD and FSX. 

 

Thanks in advance for any help,

 

Andy.

240GB should be enough today, HOWEVER, you don't want to find yourself one or two years from now having to change the SSD because they've released a super-high-resolution photoscenery of the whole world that's 100GB big...  If you want to have a good "clearance", get yourself a 500GB SSD dedicated for FSX or P3D in the future.

 

You don't need to install the OS on it, but I highly recommend that you first install your OS on a dedicated SSD and then FSX on "another" dedicated SSD. I'd do it like this:

 

- 120GB SSD for Windows 7 64bit and all minor programs that you use.

- 500GB SSD dedicated for FSX

 

- 1TB HDD for dead storage (films, music, documents etc.).

 

You'll notice an improvement in loading times, but not in FPS.

If all you want to do, is add an SSD, it is not difficult.

 

Install a 240 GB (should be fine, mine is 128 GB) into your system.

 

Copy the entire FSX folder from your current harddrive onto the SSD.

 

Change the drive letters, so that the SSD now has the same driveletter

as your previous FSX drive (or use the Flight1 Registry Fixer to change the

FSX location in the registry) and you are done.

i have recently been having problems with flight simulator and as a resulted i have decided to get an SSD to give me a slight performance upgrade and any help with this would be great. This SSD will only be for FSX and addons.  I am looking at a 240gb SSD to accommodate all of my addons, REX, PMDG, My Traffic, 50+ payware airports etc, firstly I am wondering if 240gb will be enough and i am also wondering how the SSD works. By this i mean do i need to install my OS (windows 7) onto it? I already have a normal 1tb hard drive with windows 7 on. any help with this and any other helpful pointers would be great because although i am pretty experienced with most flight simulator aspects i am not sure how to set up an SSD and FSX. 

 

Thanks in advance for any help,

 

Andy.

 

The conventional wisdom here is to install OS on one drive, and sim(s) on another.   With modern SATA III SSDs I believe this is not necessary in any way due to how SSDs field I/O requests, in particular w/ the file sizes involved in writes to memory.   I think this is legacy thinking when HDDs were in service when that approach mattered.

 

Instead, I recommend OS & Sim on the same SATA III SSD, especially if you use the box for more than only simming.  If you use this approach, you can keep the OS/sim drive absolutely clean except for your simming software:  FSX/P3D, REX, your sim add ons, and that is it.   You can keep your old HHD, reformat it and use your same OS disk to install a 2nd bootable Windows onto it.  This means there is no need for ANY other bloatware of ANY type on your sim drive:   no antivirus, no anti-malware, no Office apps, not nothing.   Put everything else on your second OS install.   When you need to download software for your sims, simply boot to the 2nd OS (w/ it's a/v an other bloatware installed), save to a non-user user directory, and you can install your add ons from the SSD boot.  I can attest you will have fabulous I/O performance w/ this approach, and bonus, a simple single backup of one drive keeps your backup simple.   Boot times are very rapid.  I had FSX & P3D installed on my 500GB SSD until last week when I uninstalled FSX.  With many add ons in both sims I still was only half full--again, because no other software is on the drive.  I have all mesh, 7 different FTX regions, multiple aircraft installed in BOTH sims.   I now have more than 2/3rds free on the SSD for P3D going forward, and it's already largely complete.

 

I had several old HDDs laying around so I made a complete clone of my OS/sim drive in the event of drive failure--no need to have coordinated backups of two drives at the same time.  

Instead, I recommend OS & Sim on the same SATA III SSD, especially if you use the box for more than only simming. 

 

That's also a good option! But if he's going to do that, he should definitely get, at least, a 500GB SSD, or better a 1TB for further clearance and thinking ahead for the future (P3D, X-Plane 10 etc...).

That's also a good option! But if he's going to do that, he should definitely get, at least, a 500GB SSD, or better a 1TB for further clearance and thinking ahead for the future (P3D, X-Plane 10 etc...).

I think I worded that w/ room for ambiguity.  I meant to say if the entire PC, i.e. all contained drives, will be used for more than only simming, then sticking w/ the model I outlined it a good option for sure.   I can say now w/ FSX off the drive, and P3D 2.2 installed w/ FTXG, 4 FTX Aux regions, FTX NCA, 3 aircraft add ons, all mesh, REX 4 and REX E+, I still have over 2/3rds of the 500Gb drive free.  Xplane could take up the other half so 1TB would be optimal, but for me very doubtful I'll need that.   I only install what I'm using and so I can say w/ certainty I will have a hard time even getting the 500Gb drive even half full as I see it.  Right now I am committed to only one simulator and so far P3D is filling the bill well.

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Oh and I forgot to say, 

 

most importantly you should install FSX directly onto the root folder, like this:

 

C:\FSX\

 

Name of the folder doesn't really mater. Keep it short to avoid the "too long file path" issue and you'll be fine.

i have recently been having problems with flight simulator and as a resulted i have decided to get an SSD to give me a slight performance upgrade and any help with this would be great. This SSD will only be for FSX and addons.  I am looking at a 240gb SSD to accommodate all of my addons, REX, PMDG, My Traffic, 50+ payware airports etc, firstly I am wondering if 240gb will be enough and i am also wondering how the SSD works. By this i mean do i need to install my OS (windows 7) onto it? I already have a normal 1tb hard drive with windows 7 on. any help with this and any other helpful pointers would be great because although i am pretty experienced with most flight simulator aspects i am not sure how to set up an SSD and FSX. 

 

Thanks in advance for any help,

 

Andy.

 

On my next system (building shortly) Win 7 on a 256 GB SSD, FSX on a 256 GB SSD, Addons on a 512 GB SSD and Storage on 1.5 TB HDD.

Thank you very much for all of your help, I have taken it all on board and due to pricing will probably have to order a 250gb ssd and if I get a new simulator in the future I will deal with that hurdle when I get there. Nw I am just wondering, I have already installed windows 7, the motherboard drivers, mmy graphics card drivers etc, so I take it I wont have to reinstall them (apart from windows 7) when I add my ssd to the system?

No need to reinstall anything... just add the SSD and leave the OS on the current drive.

 

Copy the entire FSX folder over to the SSD.

 

Run the Flight1 registry fixer to set the FSX location to the new drive.

 

If all works nicely, you can delete the (old) FSX folder from your HDD.

Brilliant! Thank you very much for all of your help. The SSD is due to arrive tomorrow, can't wait to get it set up!