Install to a dedicated drive?

[Guest USAFMedic]

Would it be beneficial in terms of performance to install FS9 to a dedicated drive, and not on a drive where all of my other crap resides?I've utilized many of the tweaking tips I've found on this board, and still am lucky to squeeze out 20FPS consistently.I have an Athlon 64 3400+ (2.2Ghz), 1GB memory, eVGA Geforce 6600GT (71.89 drivers), Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS, 200GB Western Digital HD (78GB available), and a 10GB HD dedicated for Windows XP only.Your thoughts/suggestions would be appreciated. If I can offer any other information, please let me know.Thanks in advance!

[W2DR 1,860]

I don't think it will make a noticeable difference. You might be able to get textures to load a little faster but there will be absolutely no difference in the framerate. I have five drives on this system and have tried every combination possible. At present I have the sim on one drive, the OS on another drive, and the swapfile on yet a third drive. The result...I see absolutely no difference between this setup and having everything on a single drive. All mileage is, of course, variable but if you have to buy the second drive to try things out I wouldn't spend the money.Doug

[Guest]

You're saving time during loading of scenery and aircraft as your computer doesn't have to do as many harddisk head movements.Apart from that it doesn't make much of a difference.

[Guest TRK3586]

I recently purchased a new drive solely for FS. After a complete re-install of Windows, FS, and all my add-ons, I see an appreciable difference. The new HD is an SATA instead of ATA 133, so that may contribute to the performance boost, or it may just be that I re-installed everything. Either way, I'm happy with how my FS world looks now.Tim

[Guest allcott]

You might want to take a look in the Hardware forum, where there are already several discussions about how to apportion FS to multiple hard drives.Allcott