Separate HD for FSX??

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,The Flight1 registry repair tool will edit the registry in about 2 seconds. Then many add-ons will work just fine.Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[Guest SkullxBones]

I just bought a new drive and installed only FSX on it. So far I don't see any difference. Still get the same stutters in high FPS areas and have to limit the FPS in those areas to smooth it out.I was running out of storage space so I had to do it. Now that I have a dedicated drive for FSX, my primary disc drive that has my operating system on it will not get such a thrashing constantly loading scenery for hours a day.

[yellowjack 28]

The big advantage with a separate drive or partition is that the System partition is highly dynamic and will therefore fragment very quickly. If FSX is on that partition it too will get into the fragmentation soup of the systems partition. As FSX performs best when defragged and sorted according to name order then this performance tuning will be lost. Keep FSX on a different partition and use NickN's defragging method and FSX will be as gold until you install another aicraft or add-on.

[albix 1]

Hello,this is how I have set my system:following the tip of a FS guru (never argue with windows) I have installed both FS9 and FSX on drive C, the same where OS is.I have three other disks: D, E and F.I have moved (cut and paste) FS9 in E and FSX in F and again from there I have moved "Aircraft" folder of FS9 and "SimObjects" of FSX to D.Then, with the tips of other expert simmers, I have used Junction Link Magic ( http://www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm ) and have linked all the directories.I am very happy with this configuration and these are the advantages:1) FS9 and FSX appear to be in C and windows is soo happy!2) Both FS9 and FSX run in their own fast two WD Raptors @ 10.000 rpm and because they are not so huge and I don't want them to be full this is why I have moved the two biggest directories in D.3) Both "aircraft" and "simobjects" directories have plenty of spaces in a bigger, even if slower, disk.Again I am very happy with this configuration and want to thanks all simmers who helped me with this project.

[ninovm 0]

Which drive did you get? Just wondering because I'm going to do the same. The 300G raptor is $240 and the Samsung is $100. I was hoping either would be an improvement over my current raid setup with FSX on the default C: drive.

[Guest Mower]

It is UTTERLY counter-intuitive to say that ANY app or game will function better on the same drive as the OS.You will never convince me otherwise.FSX has it own partition on a sepearte drive than the OS.Dedicated bandwidth for OS and FSX.Simple logic.

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,Have you tried things both ways?At one point the world was thought to be flat and that the sun revolved around the Earth.Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[FalconAF 213]

>OK guys. It seems the vote goes to a separate drive. I never>thought about the idea that if something goes wrong with the>master OS drive at least I won't lose FS and all its separate>addons. Thanks for the advice, tomSimple solution to prevent the above....Disk Imaging.With the price of external hard drives what they are today, you should be making regular Disk Images of your entire system, along with any other "backup" strategies you use for individual files on your computer.A 1-Terabyte external hard drive can be had for under $150 today (look for online sales, or newspaper deals from places like Fry's Electronics...they are tons of these "sales" every day). Any major changes to what is on your main hard drive (OS partition) caused by installations of software to either your OS partition OR a secondary hard drive should result in you making a new Disk Image of the OS drive. Then if it crashes, it is a simple matter to re-install the OS drive image, and you are right back in business.FalconAF

[Flaps30 3]

Falcon,I have thought about an external drive; Is the "imaging" you mention kind of like what Windows Restore does? I don't know too much about the external backup thing. For one, I was told if you have a bad HD crash, it isnt as simple as just reloading the backup onto a new drive. What is really involved? Tom

[FalconAF 213]

Tom,A Disk Image is not quite the same as using the Windows Restore function. There are similarities. But the main difference (among others) is that if you lose your hard drive that Windows is installed on, then you also will lose the ability to run the Windows Restore function. Everything on the hard drive gets trashed, so you can't even access the Windows Restore point anymore.A Disk Image is a "snapshot" of the entire hard drive, and can be re-installed to the hard drive. It re-writes EVERYTHING back to the hard drive, icluding the Windows Registry entries. It can prevent you from having to do a reformat and re-install of everything you had there before. The best example of it is if you buy a computer from a company and it comes already pre-loaded with the Operating System, other programs, and all the drivers that make it all work, the GOOD companies will also include a "backup installation recovery" disk with it. That disk is a "Disk Image" of everything that was installed on the hard drive before they shipped the computer to you. If your hard drive ever crashed, you could insert the Disk Image disk and reload everything again. You would end up with your computer being exactly the way it was when you took it out of the box. In this case though, you would still have to go back and re-install everything YOU ADDED (software-wise) to the computer since you took it out of the box.A good strategy is to make your OWN additional "Disk Images" on a regular basis as you add new stuff to your computer hard drives. Imaging software is inexpensive. I won't recommend any one particular software application over another. You can search the Internet to see what is available. But using one to make regular new images can save your butt and a lot of time instead of spending days re-installing everything if you get a virus attack, hard drive failure, etc.Remember...Windows Restore only works IF you can still run Windows from your hard drive. If not...you need an alternative way to get everything back to the way it was BEFORE you lost the drive and Windows.FalconAF

[Flaps30 3]

Thanks Falcon. You explained that beautifully. Now I know I will be getting that external drive soon. Regards, Tom;-)

[FalconAF 213]

Tom,Here's a good Wiki article on Disk Images and it explains the differences between them and normal backups. It might help you understand the concepts better, and why a disk image is ideal for a hard drive that contains something like Windows OS and FSX (or any other number of additional programs added to the hard drive).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_imageFalconAF