what's the best setup with an SSD and disc HD

[UKJim 502]

I have borrowed a 64GB SSD off a friend and I am wondering what have been the best setups people have had?

Do I put FSX on the SSD or do I put just the OS?

Do I put both on SSD but stick my scenery on other disc?

Cheers

Jim

[rob16584 42]

I've just got my OS on the SSD and FSX on a normal HD.

[mutley 4,487]

Jim. Try and keep your FS off the OS disc.

You would notice the most difference if you use the SSD for the OS, Windows will start up and shut down a whole lot quicker.

If you put FS on the SSD I doubt whether you would notice any difference. (Been there, done that!)

Cheers,

Joe

[UKJim 502]

I'm thinking about FSX load times - so FSX does not load faster on an SSD?

I've installed it all on SSD at the moment and not really noticed any difference apart from FSX load times are quicker - would putting FSX on a normal disc remove this?

[mutley 4,487]

I've never monitored load times for FSX, I just know it gets progressively longer over time as I add and remove add-ons, that's one problem with reviewing you get all sorts of junk left on your disc.

FSX would probably be faster loading but wouldn't make the sim run faster, I was also considering the disc capacity 64Gb is not that much if you have all these mega scenery packs installed.

[flybytes 34]

My PC configuration consists of a 120GB ssd (C: drive) and 2TB hard drive (partitioned to give approx' 1TB - D: + 1TB - E: drives). Win7 & FSX-A are located on C:, FS2004 & most other apps are on D:, and the E: partition is exclusively used for scenery storage. As E: only gets written to when adding new scenery files its data will be unlikely to get fragmented over time.

Win7 is configured so that downloads/documents/pictures etc are stored on the D: drive not on the SSD as would happen in a default configuration.

With this configuration I can fly at mach-1 @ 300 ft and my GenX England/Wales photo scenery remains sharply focused. My previous PC (no ssd) struggled at 200 knots.

It should be noted that SSD read/write times of small or large files do not vary as much as they do in a mechanical hard drive. A fast hard drive will download lots of large files stored sequentionally on its disk almost as fast as from a SSD. Hard drives are very inneficient at storing small data files - for example text files containing just one letter of the alphabet or a small novel will still take up one sector of disk space and have relatively similar read times.

I've been calibrating & repairing disk drives since the late 1960's (when a 4MB disk drive had the size & look of a top loading twin-tub washing machine and required a fork-lift!). Todays disk drives still work on the same basic principles, but I do find the current price/performance/reliability ratios amazing and have always been impressed at how they have always stayed one step ahead of the micro-electronic competition. It does look that in a very near future only server computers will have internal hard drives. In 3-5 years time I suspect that almost all home PCs/laptops will be sold with internal SSD & no hard-drive.

I suspect that future apps including flight sims will only be available in a 'cloud' and we will all be renting time on their use. The concept of personal electronic data storage will become as ***ue and airy-fairy as the cloud itself.

Chhers,

Ray.

[UKJim 502]

Thanks for the post Ray - I might try this setup! Thanks

[mutley 4,487]

Great responses guys, it's good to read everyone's opinions, I certainly learn a lot here!