Using an SSD on my pc, your thoughts required!

[No Longer Active]

Hi All.

I have just purchased a small 40GB SSD for my pc, and was wondering if I can install FS9 and my addons on to that harddrive so that when I run the program it boots from this drive instead of the harddrive with windows on it.

Windows XP = My normal SATA harddrive
FS9+Addons = Runs from the SSD

Can this be done?

Will be getting another 60GB SSD for XPLANE!

Thanks

Alex

[weyes]

Yes, it can be done.
There is people that installs FS in a SSD to improve the performance.

[No Longer Active]

Thanks for the response, I was thinking the same thing, maybe I could achieve an improvement on autogen scenery. My entire FS folder with all my UK scenery and airports comes in at less than 20gb, so I am glad I bought this. These SSD's are very expensive though!

Thanks.

Alex

[737NUT]

I run FSX on a seperate SSD drive and WIN7 has its own SSD drive. All my storage is an old 2 gig sata drive. It works awesome!! Super fast load times and great performance.

[Neil Hewitt]

All my FSX boxes are solely running on SSDs. The performance advantage is amazing. One caveat - make sure the SSD you buy plays nicely with your motherboard. With newer gear it's not a problem, but I've had problems with one particular box that keeps blue-screening and differential diagnosis shows it's the SSD it objects to. Also, SSDs are vulnerable to power spikes, as I've found out to my cost. Make sure any PC using them is behind a surge protector.

One thing - SSD support in WinXP is poor. The disk subsystem needs to support the SSD command-set extensions (such as TRIM) to get proper performance out of them. I've heard horror stories about WinXP + older motherboards + SSD. I know it's a big ask, but I'd strongly advise you to consider upgrading to Windows 7. Yes, that means a complete rebuild and re-install, but you'll get better performance out of your SSD under Win7, which has numerous optimisations for SSDs.

SSDs are no longer luxury items - I mean, compared to HDDs for like capacity, yes, they're hideously expensive; but prices are now down to about the £1 per 1GB mark for high performance models, even less for the mainstream models, which is a fraction of what they used to cost. If your application puts access and transfer speeds ahead of capacity, SSD is the way to go.

[No Longer Active]

Hi Neil.

Unfortunately, I just cannot reap together the costs of a shiny i5 system as I dont have much disposable income and my main pc is shared by my family in our office. So I have resulted to building a new separate PC that can run FS9 and Project Magenta IFR panel well.

So far I have purchased:

An Thermalite Tsunami dream PC case for £12 delivered on ebay. A Gigabyte mobo + E8400 c2d cpu and cooler + 500w PSU for £35 delivered on ebay. Just purchased 2gb of Ram for £12 (one stick) on ebay, and just won an SATA2 200gb hard drive for £14 delivered. My latest purchase is OCZ Vertex 2 40gb SSD for £40 for fs9 and addons. So my pc has cost £113 so far. I just need a gfx card now. I have had to do this on the cheap to just get in the air if you know what I mean. I think I have done well so far, I will need another stick of 2gb ram, and I have a spare copy of win xp with a license key.

I hope to get FS9 maxed out on this pc......

Alex

[Neil Hewitt]

Hi Alex.

The E8400 is a nice processor. I'd imagine you'll be able to max out FS9 without too much difficulty. Might be worth an overclock, even if only a modest one. You only really need the latest goodies if you want to max out FSX.

I'm in the happy place that I can afford to make a reasonable outlay on new kit - although it is about my only indulgence these days, prices rising as they are - but plenty of people have done amazing stuff on a budget. For what you've spent you've got a lot of stuff!

As I mentioned, XP and SSDs are not necessarily good bedfellows, but it will work. Here's a thread that discusses stuff you can do to improve SSD performance under XP: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?43460-Making-XP-pro-SSD-friendly

If you're interested, I have a few graphics cards going spare - mostly nVidia. They're a couple of years old but they still work and they were top-end when they were new. PM me and I'll have a dig around and see what I've got - I might be able to hook you up with something reasonably fast for the cost of the postage.

[jmig]

That is really nice of you neilh to offer AlexJ an unused card.

What about running SSD cards in older MBs that only have SATA 2 interfaces? How much slower is it compared to the newer 3.0 SATA? I have considered SSDs but keep putting it off until I upgrade to a new MB.

[Neil Hewitt]

Well, SATA 2 is capable of 3Gb/s transfer, which is much more than you'd get out of even the fastest HDD. SATA 3 is double that, at up to 6Gb/s Until recently, SSDs were all SATA 2 anyway, so yes, they work, and yes, you'll get fairly blistering performance out of them compared to an HDD on the same controller. Of course, the actual throughput you get depends a lot on your chipset and the SATA controller in use, but it'll be better than HDD.

You can use a SATA 3 SSD on a SATA 2 controller. It'll just run at a lower throughput. Not a bad idea if you're planning on buying a new motherboard down the line but want to buy the SSD now.

Note, BTW, that to get SATA 3 speeds on a SATA 3 board, you'll need SATA 3 cables. Older cables won't sustain the transfer rate and you'll fall back to 3Gb/s.

Hope that helps.