Hi everyone,

I have an internal 1 TB HDD with around 200 GB remaining and a portable 1 TB USB SSD which is essentially empty. I’d preferably like to install the sim on the SSD so that I don’t have to entirely delete X-Plane’s scenery to install the new sim. Is that a bad thing to do? Are there any downsides to installing on a portable SSD? Is it better to try and delete ortho scenery from XP on the HDD to free up space?

 

 

1 hour ago, FlyingInACessna said:

Hi everyone,

I have an internal 1 TB HDD with around 200 GB remaining and a portable 1 TB USB SSD which is essentially empty. I’d preferably like to install the sim on the SSD so that I don’t have to entirely delete X-Plane’s scenery to install the new sim. Is that a bad thing to do? Are there any downsides to installing on a portable SSD? Is it better to try and delete ortho scenery from XP on the HDD to free up space?

 

 

External disk on USB is much more slower, than an internal connected disk via SATA or NVMe. So it's a bad idea.

I dont think people recommend using HDDs for MSFS. You should be looking into getting an internal SSD for that. 

3 hours ago, FlyingInACessna said:

Hi everyone,

I have an internal 1 TB HDD with around 200 GB remaining and a portable 1 TB USB SSD which is essentially empty. I’d preferably like to install the sim on the SSD so that I don’t have to entirely delete X-Plane’s scenery to install the new sim. Is that a bad thing to do? Are there any downsides to installing on a portable SSD? Is it better to try and delete ortho scenery from XP on the HDD to free up space?

 

 

Hint:- Once you have used FS you won't be going back to X-Plane 😉

All the way through this people have been speaking about getting their rigs as good as they can - whether that's buying new faster stuff or just getting their current rig in order.

Sticking MSFS on a USB SSD is getting off to a bad start; bottle-necking it before it's even been to the CPU/ GPU.

That just isn't a good idea - especially as storage is cheap as chips at the moment (excuse the pun).

I don't know a lot about external SSDs and I should probably do some more research on the matter, but I believe that USB 3.0 already offers a slightly faster speed than the SATA interface. Considering how little today's games benefit from NVME speeds, I think that if you connect it to a faster USB port (naming is a mess, should be called USB 3.2 Gen 2), you will not feel a difference over an internal NVME drive, unless there is some other latency involved with the USB interface. What's for sure though is that in any case (except for a USB 2.0/1.1 port) you will get a better speed than installing the simulator on your internal HDD, so between the two options the external SSD is a no-brainer.

4 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

I don't know a lot about external SSDs and I should probably do some more research on the matter, but I believe that USB 3.0 already offers a slightly faster speed than the SATA interface. Considering how little today's games benefit from NVME speeds, I think that if you connect it to a faster USB port (naming is a mess, should be called USB 3.2 Gen 2), you will not feel a difference over an internal NVME drive, unless there is some other latency involved with the USB interface. What's for sure though is that in any case (except for a USB 2.0/1.1 port) you will get a better speed than installing the simulator on your internal HDD, so between the two options the external SSD is a no-brainer.

Thank you! Now I’m stuck because every other response said I’d be bottlenecking the speed if I used the external drive... You’re confident that won’t be the case? And just FYI the portable SSD is a Samsung T5. Is it worth investing in an internal SSD considering I have this external one already?

 

Edit again: I looked it up and the max data transfer rate for an internal Samsung SSD is 550 MB/s and it’s 540 MB/s for the external T5 I already own. That different is essentially nothing. Are there any other downsides to an external SSD installation?

Edited August 10, 20205 yr by FlyingInACessna

Remember that this is theoretical speed. You will get nowhere near this speed in read/write operations over the USB3 port.

I would guess closer to 100MB/s in practical speed.

29 minutes ago, FlyingInACessna said:

 

Edit again: I looked it up and the max data transfer rate for an internal Samsung SSD is 550 MB/s and it’s 540 MB/s for the external T5 I already own. That different is essentially nothing. Are there any other downsides to an external SSD installation?

Format your SSD drive using NTFS file system. It may default to exFAT and MSFS won't use it.

29 minutes ago, FlyingInACessna said:

Thank you! Now I’m stuck because every other response said I’d be bottlenecking the speed if I used the external drive... You’re confident that won’t be the case? And just FYI the portable SSD is a Samsung T5. Is it worth investing in an internal SSD considering I have this external one already?

Edit again: I looked it up and the max data transfer rate for an internal Samsung SSD is 550 MB/s and it’s 540 MB/s for the external T5 I already own. That different is essentially nothing. Are there any other downsides to an external SSD installation?

If your motherboard does not have an M.2 slot this means you are limited to an internal SATA SSD, so the difference would be quite small provided you have a fast enough USB port. If you could list the motherboard model the information can be found easily.

If you have a slower USB port then you might be bottlenecked, but probably still faster than installing the game on an HDD that is almost full. The SSD is nearly empty so you've got nothing to lose by trying out the game in there first and then see if there's a noticeable bottleneck.

10 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

If your motherboard does not have an M.2 slot this means you are limited to an internal SATA SSD, so the difference would be quite small provided you have a fast enough USB port. If you could list the motherboard model the information can be found easily.

If you have a slower USB port then you might be bottlenecked, but probably still faster than installing the game on an HDD that is almost full. The SSD is nearly empty so you've got nothing to lose by trying out the game in there first and then see if there's a noticeable bottleneck.

It’s an Azus Z170-AR. Thanks for the help!

Edited August 10, 20205 yr by FlyingInACessna

10 hours ago, FlyingInACessna said:

Hi everyone,

I have an internal 1 TB HDD with around 200 GB remaining and a portable 1 TB USB SSD which is essentially empty. I’d preferably like to install the sim on the SSD so that I don’t have to entirely delete X-Plane’s scenery to install the new sim. Is that a bad thing to do? Are there any downsides to installing on a portable SSD? Is it better to try and delete ortho scenery from XP on the HDD to free up space?

 

 

Hi ,

As an experiment I purchased an mve ssd for external use and loaded X-Plane on it. I didn't see much of a difference between the internal and the external installations.

4 minutes ago, FlyingInACessna said:

It’s an Azus Z270. If you need the exact model let me know. Thanks for the help!

I'm looking at them now and the rear I/O varies a lot between the models, so the exact model would help indeed.

1 minute ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

I'm looking at them now and the rear I/O varies a lot between the models, so the exact model would help indeed.

I messed up - it’s a Z170-AR. Got confused with my brother’s setup.

4 minutes ago, FlyingInACessna said:

I messed up - it’s a Z170-AR. Got confused with my brother’s setup.

The rear I/O in the Z170-AR has:

• 2x USB 2.0/1/1 ports
• 2x USB 3.0 ports
• 1x USB 3.1 Type A port
• 1x USB 3.1 Type C port

I've simplified the naming in this case, but your USB 3.1 ports are USB 3.1 Gen 2/USB 3.2 Gen 2 (confusing naming, I know) with a data rate of 10 Gbit/s. Connect your SSD to either the teal Type A or the Type C port and you can enjoy its full speeds. According to reviews, they are very competitive with an internal SATA SSD.