2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Not light years slower but slower

Having used 5400 ide drives nothing is slow to me anymore lol! 

It's true you don't need 2 super fast drives in your pc if 4gb is enough for your needs. 

I do a lot of video /photo /audio work and it's crucial for me to have multiple drives for redundancy (you can't do RAID with one lol) but the new machine i had built this year I 'only' had 2 due to increased reliability and size of ssd drives. It was also the first I paid for someone else to build in 30 years as I my temporary accommodation is not really suitable for sterile installs! 

My mb has 3 nvme expansion slots, but only ONE of these runs as fast as the system slot due to shared resources so when I installed it I spent about 2 hours with the manual and a calculator making sure my read /write /access times were the absolute best. 

All relative though, just means a one hour 370gb 4k video would load and build proxy files in 2 minutes as opposed to 2 mins 10 seconds! 

My current 2x4 setup is the best I've ever had with one 5tb external backup for quick offline data dumps. 

In 2015 I had a very rare mb power surge that killed 3 of my 5 internal ssds and both of my external backup drives. I lost 22 years of photos /videos. One year and every data retrieval option exhausted I got 8 years of data back off those dead drives. Now I disconnect my externals when not being used. 

If you don't store work on your pc then you only need one of everything. If I had one I'd still always have one system partition for windows and one for my data. I just don't trust the modern day Microsoft anywhere near the drive/s that have my personal stuff on. 

Edited September 6, 20241 yr by sloppysmusic
Tippo

Thanks to all you guys/gals. Yes, my PC is a mess. It grew like Topsy. I have an FS9 disk with hundreds of scenery addons, aircraft, nav programs etc.

I still run it because it runs so smoothly in W10 with my i7, 3.70 GHz, 64GB 2133 RAM, Radeon RX 6950 XT 16GB.

I have couple of drives for backups - I prefer local backups to Cloud. I have another for music which I use with a Sonos system.

The PC also has XP12 installed on a Linux partition - in fact I can run it in two different distros because Linux being what it is, some kernels run it better than another - some days. 😬

I held this all back in my OP as I knew it would muddy the waters. The acute problem I had was a C drive which was nearing capacity. I think I have found a way out of this, thanks to advice on this thread.

I take on board the advice about one  or two drives only. I can't do that for the reasons stated - maybe two (W11 and Linux) with another for back ups.

If/when I take the plunge and upgrade to a new PC (I always built my own, but next time I'll get a custom build), I will limit the number of drives as you guys all suggest.

Would that mean I could run FSX(SE), P3Dv5, and maybe v6 off the same 4TB SSD? Would there not be all sorts of conflicts?

 

Edited September 6, 20241 yr by betelgeuse

37 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

I do a lot of video /photo /audio work and it's crucial for me to have multiple drives for redundancy (you can't do RAID with one lol) but the new machine i had built this year I 'only' had 2 due to increased reliability and size of ssd drives.

Nowhere in your post do I see the word backup. If you have RAID1 it could be argued you don’t need backups. But with no data stored on another device if anything happens to that PC all your eggs are in one basket.

I use a Synology NAS drive for backups. It also doubles up as my music and photo repository. RAID1 for two 4Tb drives and very convenient for my other PCs too.

27 minutes ago, betelgeuse said:

Would that mean I could run FSX(SE), P3Dv5, and maybe v6 off the same 4TB SSD? Would there not be all sorts of conflicts?

Yes. You could have all six versions of P3D and there wouldn’t be a problem. They’re independent of each other. I’m curious why you still have FSX. Aircraft only available for that sim or another reason?

The 4Gb limit is a real pain and modern PCs are wasted on it as settings can’t be increased as VAS would be exceeded.

5 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’m curious why you still have FSX. Aircraft only available for that sim or another reason?

I fly old birds a lot, DC3, Milton Shupe's masterpieces like the DC7, the Argonaut, Handley Page Hermes, Ford Trimotor, Junkers types, etc. With the help of an old pal (may he RIP) we equipped the Argonaut and Hermes with INS. It was a faff to initialise before departure, but very rewarding when used successfully in a flight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delco_Carousel

These were all FSX aircraft and a few FS9.  Same goes for sceneries - some FSX sceneries have never been re-worked for P3D, including my favourite small airfields in France, Germany, Austria, many of them freeware.

I just noticed, trawling through CIVA articles, that the Delco Carousel is available as a plugin for P3Dv4 (Simufly.com) but I've no info about v5.

A version of Delco Carousel has been available for XP11 - I don't know about XP12.

Edited September 6, 20241 yr by betelgeuse

7 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

My current 2x4 setup is the best I've ever had with one 5tb external backup for quick offline data dumps. 

 

6 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Nowhere in your post do I see the word backup

:D