SSD vs. Hard Drive

[ThrottleUp 630]

I was a holdout for spinners and then one day upgraded an old laptop I had with a Samsung Evo SSD. The difference was staggering for me with Windows 10 booting from cold and dark to sign in screen in 4 sec vs. 5 minutes of grinding to get to desktop.

I then fitted Evo's to my gaming PC and haven't looked back.

There is one thing the old spinners excel at - storing vast amounts of movies & music. All that stuff I keep on the spinners because speed is not a factor.  The set up I have is:

• SSD 1: Windows 10 OS only
• SSD 2: MSFS Only
• SSD 3: XP12 Only
• Spinner 1: Games
• Spinner 2: Music & Game Mods

Highly recommend going for SSD!

[YYZ 9]

I just recently built a new PC and made sure it could run MSFS 2020.  All drives are Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVME's.  2 x 1TB for work and a 2TB for Sims.  Blazing fast.  30% faster than a regular SATA SSD.  The case has a glass side, so strange to not see any drives in the machine!

[CondorBill 0]

If you want the best speed and your motherboard supports NVME then it is silly to buy a SATA SSD instead of NVME - because the SATA SSD is limited by the SATA buss architecture and the NVME uses much faster PCI-E. Note that you will often see M.2 and this is a physical specification and you can get SATA SSDs in the M.2 format so be sure you get the NVME drive for best performance.

Specs provided for all drives are the absolute best numbers derived under ideal conditions and can be theoretical so are very unlikely to perform at those specs when in your machine!!!  Also, the program design reading or writing the data can influence the speeds you attain.

[Ray Proudfoot 9,044]

Since posting the question last Sunday the OP hasn’t returned to AvSim. Hopefully when he does he’ll follow the advice given.

[turbomax 3,307]

22 hours ago, YYZ said:

NVME's.  ......  30% faster than a regular SATA SSD. 

nobody would give a d.a.m.n for 30%. 

whereas SATA SSDs’ maximal performance does not exceed 550MB/s, NVMe SSDs can achieve transfer speeds of about 3,500MB/s or new PCIe 4.0 versions even 7,000 MB/s. we are talking 600% - 1.200%.

not that it matters though: file transfers in MSFS are typically very low after initial load of the main game, even a SATA-6 SSD would suffice and you wouldn't notice the difference. MSFS is not a server or data base, that's where NVMe's constant high transfer speeds are essential. for new purchases I would still recommend NVMe over SATA if your motherboard supports it.

here 2 different situations as measured with task manager: both scenarios are far below even from slow SATA-6 SSD transfer performance:

1) during in-flight: 950 KB/s read transfer speed from NVMe:

 

2) during initial loading of MSFS: 182 MB/s from NVMe:

Edited March 22, 2023 by turbomax

[YYZ 9]

Yes, sorry for the typo. mine are rated at 3,500MB/s Seq. Read

[turbomax 3,307]

1 hour ago, YYZ said:

mine are rated at 3,500MB/s Seq. Read

which is still 600% higher than the fastest SATA 6 SSDs @ 550 MB/s

Edited March 22, 2023 by turbomax

[John Snyder Jr 42]

Ok guys, conversion complete! Thanks for all the replies. My load time went from 10-15 mins to like 3 mins now. WOW! I'm one happy camper! Thanks again. 

[FlyIce 354]

These days you can buy a 1TB SSD for $50 and even a 4TB SSD for barely over $200. There is truly no reason not to use SSD for Windows and MSFS.