OK, I'm about to install v4 and I am looking at a complete rejig of drives and OS to Win10. So, my question is, with three separate drives, which install scenario would be best:-

 

1)  1st SSD installed with Win 10 + 2nd SSD installed with P3d+sceneries & addons

2) 1st SSD both with Win 10 and with P3D installed + 2nd SSD installed with sceneries & addons

3) 1st SSD with Win 10 + 2nd SSD with P3d + 3rd Sata HD installed with sceneries & addons

 

I'm interested in anyone with ideas on this. Cheers guys.

Hi Howard,

This is what I would do:

1) OS on your 120GB SSD
2) P3D on your 512GB SSD
3) most used scenery & addons on the 512GB SSD as long as space available
4) rest of the scenery & addons on the HD

SSD's reduce loading times on startup and might reduce blurries while flying. Having the OS and P3D on the same drive is not the best idea because the OS and P3D would compete for access to the drive.

Maarten

1 hour ago, Rockliffe said:

3) 1st SSD with Win 10 + 2nd SSD with P3d + 3rd Sata HD installed with sceneries & addons

This is the setup I'm currently using. With a 4th HDD for storage and "stuff." Before I can think of doing something it's already done.

C: - SSD - OS and desktop apps

D: - SSD - Flightsim (and scenery) and Games

With an SSD, having the OS and flightsim on the same drive really won't impact performance that much considering the instant access time of the solid-state drive. That said, it is nice to keep them separate for organizational purposes.

My personal layout is...

C: - SSD - OS and desktop apps.
D: - SSD - Sims and Games
E: - SATA - Bulk Storage
F: - SATA - Backup of Personal Files and Bulk Storage
G: - SATA Offsite - Periodic Copy of Backup

 

1 hour ago, greggerm said:

... the instant access time of the solid-state drive. ...

Hi Greg,

Access time is not the only parameter involved. There's only one data path between RAM and drive, so the OS and P3D would still compete with each other. However, given that the transfer rates of SSD's are (much) higher than those of mechanical HDs, the issue of the OS and P3D on the same drive is not as bad with an SSD as it once was with a mechanical HD.

The size of Howard's SSD with the OS is 'only' 120GB and that is another reason not to install P3D on this drive.

Maarten

1

This is an interesting question. I'd like to ask specifically: Is there any performance advantage to separating P3D from add-on scenery on separate SSDs? (As per Rockcliffe's scenio 2). My thinking is that some textures (world scenery, weather related) would be loaded off the P3D SSD, while scenery add-ons off the other drive in parallel. Although, caching textures is probably occurring in the background, making this a waste of time? 

10 minutes ago, odourboy said:

This is an interesting question. I'd like to ask specifically: Is there any performance advantage to separating P3D from add-on scenery on separate SSDs? (As per Rockcliffe's scenio 2). My thinking is that some textures (world scenery, weather related) would be loaded off the P3D SSD, while scenery add-ons off the other drive in parallel. Although, caching textures is probably occurring in the background, making this a waste of time? 

I can see where LM is going with their new installation method. I just don't know how far they're going with it so I'm spreading things out. I can always consolidate later if need be.

Orbx, Aerosoft and probably others still use the FSX install method so expansion room is needed on the flight sim SSD (500GB). Scenery is a black hole which will only keep getting bigger and bigger now that developers don't have a 4GB constraint. 500GB is OK today but who knows what's coming.

I'm thinking reinstall, too. Just recovering from a motherboard death and I was impressed when I first ran the new install of P3Dv4 and it found all addons and loaded them. Thanks Lorbi-SI. Separating the flight sim into similar components and isolating them from each other just makes sense to me when disaster strikes.

My original thought was to follow Maarten's suggestion of three separate drives. Thanks for all the helpful answers fellas, appreciated. BTW, I should know all this but, is it still advantageous to have other addons such as aircraft on a separate drive also?

There's no competing for drive access with P3D and O/S on the same drive. In fact all the runtime operating files for P3D are on the OS drive anyway.

In fact adding separate drives increases queue width and slows performance on the PC, increasing queue depth requires RAID.

What I would do with multiple drives is KISS. I would install all on the OS drive and P3D into the default location and add Modify permission to the Users group on the P3D program files folder, I would expand big data like scenery and planes onto the spare drives if need be with the P3D config.

 

Interesting and totally contrary to what I thought. Always learning something new!

1 hour ago, SteveW said:

There's no competing for drive access with P3D and O/S on the same drive. In fact all the runtime operating files for P3D are on the OS drive anyway.

In fact adding separate drives increases queue width and slows performance on the PC, increasing queue depth requires RAID.

What I would do with multiple drives is KISS. I would install all on the OS drive and P3D into the default location and add Modify permission to the Users group on the P3D program files folder, I would expand big data like scenery and planes onto the spare drives if need be with the P3D config.

 

Sorry if I'm a little slow Steve, but in simple terms, are you saying the OS and P3D should be on the same drive and then all addons and scenery on a separate one?

Hi Steve,

2 hours ago, SteveW said:

In fact all the runtime operating files for P3D are on the OS drive anyway.

Can you please explain? The .Net runtime files are on the OS drive, but only the UI uses .Net. The simulator itself is C++ and only uses the C++ redistributables from the OS drive.

2 hours ago, SteveW said:

In fact adding separate drives increases queue width and slows performance on the PC, increasing queue depth requires RAID.

Can you please explain? Each drive has it's own controller with its own queue. I would expect the queue depth to increase not decrease when everything is installed on the same drive.

thanks, Maarten

It's getting interesting!

3 hours ago, Rockliffe said:

Sorry if I'm a little slow Steve, but in simple terms, are you saying the OS and P3D should be on the same drive and then all addons and scenery on a separate one?

I'm saying that's what I do but there's nothing wrong with dedicating drives for P3D, FSX, X-Plane etc.

 

2 hours ago, mawibo said:

Can you please explain? The .Net runtime files are on the OS drive, but only the UI uses .Net. The simulator itself is C++ and only uses the C++ redistributables from the OS drive.

The OS, Direct X, C:\Users\YOU\AppData\Local\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Shaders, etc. etc. are all on the OS drive. P3D is a relatively small program utilising the OS and DX and so on, the size is down to the data.

 

2 hours ago, mawibo said:

Can you please explain? Each drive has it's own controller with its own queue. I would expect the queue depth to increase not decrease when everything is installed on the same drive.

That's right Maarten, with two controllers think of two rows of people coming through one gate, there's a guy there marshalling each row through the gate in turn. RAID stripe gives you a single controller and deeper queue.