Hard Drive configuration - clean windows 7 install

[greguolb 0]

Hi everyone, first time poster here and I love the community so far!

 

I had a somewhat specific question that I didn't quite get an answer to in my forum search thus far and it regards the hard drive setup for a new FSX install after a clean windows install. 

 

My understanding is that the ideal situation would be to have separate quality SSD's for the OS and the FSX install to be on their own dedicated drives and then have an additional 1-2 HDD's for scenery addons and everyday storage.  

 

I'm not in a place to add any more drives to my system and so I'm trying to make the best choice for my current setup: A 1x 240GB SSD and a 1TB WD caviar black.  My question is which of the following 2 setups is likely to yield the best simulation:

 

1.  Install the OS and FSX on the same primary SSD drive and keep the large scenery addons on the other HDD. 

 

2.  Install the OS on the primary SSD, FSX on a dedicated partition of the HDD and the scenery addons on the remainder of the HDD. 

 

I've heard that having a dedicated drive is of significant help to the in game performance (Smoothness) and I'd sacrifice the load time for that.  However, I"m not sure if the performance increase of a dedicated 'drive' is negated by the fact that the HDD would be partitioned and not truly dedicated to the FSX install.  

 

The wild-card here is that it's my main computer and so I have other games that I'd like to install on the SSD but could live with having on the HDD.  At the end of the day, am I far better off (i.e. worth the cash) to go with:

 

3.  buy a second SSD to use as a dedicated FSX drive. 

 

I'm away at the cottage for the weekend so I can't respond to clarification questions but I will when I return. 

 

THanks in advance!

 

Brian

[John_Tavendale 362]

In an ideal world you'd have a SSD for the OS and a seperate SSD for FSX. That being said, there isn't much performance benefit in having FSX on a SSD. Slightly quicker load times, but that's about it from my experience.

 

If you're not in a position to add another SSD, then create a partition on the SATA drive and install FSX on there.

 

I like to keep FS seperate from the OS.

[greguolb 0]

Thanks for the reply John, I appreciate the input!

 

That was my interpretation of what I've been reading on my end but I don't know much when it comes to file systems and hard drive performance and so I wanted to ask the exact question I had.  

 

I'll give that setup a go and see if I notice any significant difference between the old setup and new!  

 

Best regards, 

Brian