Hello, best wishes for a merry and peaceful Christmas to everyone! I have a question that has been buzzing me for a few days, I bought the pc that will arrive in a few days by putting 2 nvme ssds of 1tb each Samsung 980 Pro, only now I have a big doubt, how is it better to prepare the operating system and msfs? The motherboard will be a Z790 d5 tomahawk. I will use the pc at 99x100 only for msfs, so how is it better to put SO and msfs? SO on one m2 and msfs on the other m2 ?Or would it be better to put both of them on the same m2?Only that at that point 1tb would be small to have SO many msfs?I would kindly like to know if objectively there is a performance difference between having SO and msfs on the same m2 or in two separate m2s. Because reading, it is said that the first m2 slot is faster than the second, but MSI official website does not mention this difference. Kindly let me know from you, how is it better to put so and msfs? Same m2 or in 2 separate m2?? Thanks so much everyone and have a nice Christmas day!

An M2 SSD is so fast that it is way ahead of anything that MSFS can ask of it.
On that basis, you will not be able to tell the difference wherever you put MSFS.
MSFS runs well on an ordinary laptop, so your probably massively over specced
system for the task at hand, should have no problems, whatever you decide to do.

Not that it is an option for you, but my own preference has been a small, 240GB SATA SSD
for Windows and my programs, leaving one M2 SSD for addon scenery and one for
the main simulator.
I tried Windows on an M2 SSD and frankly could not see the difference between that
and a SATA SSD

 

Edited December 25, 20223 yr by Reader

Personally I'd put MSFS on the second drive, leave the first for the OS and apps.

Main consideration for me would be space rather than speed as M2's are so fast anyway.

G

I just got an M2 drive and moved MSFS to that drive, and my OS is still on the SSD that it came with. MSFS loads much faster now. 

 

I have just had a similar situation where are my first 1 TB Samsung nvme Drive for Windows was just joined yesterday with a 2 TB second nvme on which I placed msfs.

System is very fast and responsive. And I'm in the process of replacing all mechanical hard drives with ssds.

3 hours ago, Stefano88 said:

Only that at that point 1tb would be small to have SO many msfs?I would kindly like to know if objectively there is a performance difference between having SO and msfs on the same m2 or in two separate m2s.

In my opinion the difference in performance will be negligible. I have several M.2’s. I chose a custom installation location for MSFS, simply C:MSFS. The whole MSFS install including world updates is less than 200GB if I remember correctly. 

I use addons linker to manage all my addons. They can be stored anywhere, so when my C-drive is nearly full I’ll just keep the addons on other drives.

There’s the option of combining your two SSDs into a 2Tb RAID0, but I’m not up to date as to whether this will give any meaningful performance benefit. I used to do this on a previous Windows installation, and the read speeds were definitely faster with RAID0.

Edited December 25, 20223 yr by Cpt_Piett

All right, thank you very much everyone for your considerations and opinions about it, thank you! At this point, from what I understand, there will be no difference if I put SO and msfs on the same m2 or if I put them on two separate m2s. I honestly thought about it was in an objective way a method in which msfs made more or how to say, there was an indication from Microsoft on how and where to install it if possible, but from what I understand thanks to you, it is not so. At this point, the best thing for me I think it is to put the OS on the first m2 and msfs on the second m2, so as to leave more free space on both and above all on the msfs one, because I would like to put them as soon as I download all the world updates. Even if from what I understand it does not occupy many gb.Guys thank you all again and if you have other testimonies or tests done by you, write it as well!!! Now the only thing I'm still missing is the pc, they had to deliver it last Friday, but the motherboard hadn't arrived, and they couldn't assemble it, now the delivery of the mb is scheduled for Wednesday, so if all goes well by Thursday, maximum Friday they finally deliver it to me! Thank you and have a nice day

On 12/25/2022 at 4:07 AM, Stefano88 said:

Hello, best wishes for a merry and peaceful Christmas to everyone! I have a question that has been buzzing me for a few days, I bought the pc that will arrive in a few days by putting 2 nvme ssds of 1tb each Samsung 980 Pro, only now I have a big doubt, how is it better to prepare the operating system and msfs?

KISS method always, at least ever since we went to much faster I/O drives:  ALL on one NVMe drive--OS/MSFS/Everything.  And I have two also so clone the drive in the event of a failure. 

27 minutes ago, Noel said:

KISS method always, at least ever since we went to much faster I/O drives:  ALL on one NVMe drive--OS/MSFS/Everything.  And I have two also so clone the drive in the event of a failure. 

Hi, ah so do you think it's better to put SO and msfs all on the same m2? Why do you recommend this? Is it better or faster than if I put SO on one m2 and msfs on another m2? This will be a 99x100 pc just for msfs, so I won't put up any other programs or stuff. Yes, I could also do this, I would kindly like to understand why it's better this way though, thank you very much for your interest in my question!

14 minutes ago, Stefano88 said:

Hi, ah so do you think it's better to put SO and msfs all on the same m2? Why do you recommend this? Is it better or faster than if I put SO on one m2 and msfs on another m2? This will be a 99x100 pc just for msfs, so I won't put up any other programs or stuff. Yes, I could also do this, I would kindly like to understand why it's better this way though, thank you very much for your interest in my question!

Different folks have different approaches.. not "better",  just personal choice.

I would keep them separate.. easier to manage over time. 😉

Because there is no reason to do otherwise, at least if performance is the concern.  Some people need to split them because there are storage volume issues, but that is not the case with my install because w/ MSFS and its various addons, plus Ghost Recon: Wildlands, plus The Hunter, I still only use 698Gb.  Your m.2 NVMe drives are ultra fast compared to the older days where it made (a little!) sense to split OS and flight sim, but that is not the case in any meaningful way if PERFORMANCE is the criteria you are using.   Plus, it's ultra simple to make a complete disk clone which is my entire install, not messing around w/ split installs.  

1 minute ago, Bert Pieke said:

I would keep them separate.. easier to manage over time.

Why's that Bert?  All on one disk, which makes cloning a snap, and I see absolutely no "easier to manage" in spliting them.  There is no "management" for my install--it all works, I have a complete clone, all updates work flawlessly and that include an initial MSFS install and 2 complete reinstalls including to a new install of Win 10.  You surely have a reason to state easier to manage so yes, why is it?

Note that M.2 is a form-factor spec that supports various protocols, including NVMe.  The protocol support is a motherboard feature.

 

Speed is one consideration but without any data my inclination would be that if 2 NVMe slots are handled the same by the motherboard there wouldn't be much difference between sharing a single SSD with the OS or using both slots.  But from what I've seen (admittedly limited) only one M.2 slot has max capability.

 

Other considerations might be how you backup your system.  You might not want to back up your community folder as often as the base OS (or maybe more often?) and from what I've seen backup software works best doing a whole drive at a time.   Also if you prefer to keep most your files in your user "appdata" folder tree, or separate from appdata.

 

scott s.

.

 

 

6 hours ago, Noel said:

Because there is no reason to do otherwise, at least if performance is the concern.  Some people need to split them because there are storage volume issues, but that is not the case with my install because w/ MSFS and its various addons, plus Ghost Recon: Wildlands, plus The Hunter, I still only use 698Gb.  Your m.2 NVMe drives are ultra fast compared to the older days where it made (a little!) sense to split OS and flight sim, but that is not the case in any meaningful way if PERFORMANCE is the criteria you are using.   Plus, it's ultra simple to make a complete disk clone which is my entire install, not messing around w/ split installs.  

Ok interesting so I might as well put it all on one m2. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind!

5 hours ago, scott967 said:

Note that M.2 is a form-factor spec that supports various protocols, including NVMe.  The protocol support is a motherboard feature.

 

Speed is one consideration but without any data my inclination would be that if 2 NVMe slots are handled the same by the motherboard there wouldn't be much difference between sharing a single SSD with the OS or using both slots.  But from what I've seen (admittedly limited) only one M.2 slot has max capability.

 

scott s.

.

 

Hello, this part is very interesting! Well, I know that the motherboard supports nvme gen 4, but how can I understand if by connecting two nvme 980 pro Samsung, I have speed differences between the first and second nvme? The motherboard will be the Z790 MSI tomahawk Ddr5. Are you able to tell me? If I read in the specs, it says it has 4 nvme gen4 outputs, but it doesn't specify if they have different speeds. How can you understand? Because already knowing this I could decide how and where to put SO and msfs. Thank you very much!!

 

7 minutes ago, Stefano88 said:

Because already knowing this I could decide how and where to put SO and msfs.

You are looking at very small differences here.. possibly irrelevant in normal operations.. Keep that in mind 😉