Which drive for which add-on ?

[Paul K]

I'm about to do a complete reinstallation of FSX and all the associated scenery add-ons. I have a dedicated drive for FSX, D: ( a 300GB Velociraptor ) in addition to my normal 600GB OS drive C:

My question is...should I put my scenery add-ons on the FSX D: drive, or can they go on C: without any framerate / loading time impact on FSX ?

Here's the scenery add-ons I have:

Horizonsim Generation X Version 2 VFR Photographic Scenery: Southern England & South Wales

VFR London

Megascenery Las Vegas and Honolulu - Oahu

Additionally there are some small items of freeware scenery, such as Dave G's Duxford and Mike Dalgleish's St Kilda

Any help, hints and tips gratefully received as always

[Paul K]

I'll give it one bump...

[DaveG]

I think personally, I'd put them both on the faster D drive, but I'm no expert

[DaveB]

Oo-er..

By default, GenX2 gets loaded to drive C if I'm not mistaken though it will detect where your FSX drive is. I let it do that and it appears to run ok. I can't see any immediate advantage to having other addons like MegaSceneryXblurbwhatever in anywhere other than the FSX drive.. likewise things like DG's Duxford which will live happily in Addon Scenery. One decision you can make is whether to put GenX go into one large file. Some do this and say it works better.. others like me leave well alone Things are much easier to uninstall if they're where they installed to and where they should be. As I understand it, GenX is better OFF the FSX drive than it is on but what you do with it then is up to you

Only my twopennyworth and probably not worth the page space I've taken up.

Edit before posting..
There you go.. DG would go the exact opposite on the strength that the FSX drive is a faster drive. Isn't this fun I have 2 identical 500gb drives so that convention isn't in the equation

ATB

DaveB

[DaveG]

Ideal solution would be to get another 'raptor & put the scenery on there

[TSR2]

Definately best not to put anything from FS on the C drive. Best solution is to have 3 physical drives, one for "C" one for FS and one for Scenery. Note that they need to be physical drives, not different partions on the same disk

[DaveB]

So there you go Paul.

Buy 1 pc for your OS and FSX and then buy SSD drives for each individual scenery area and you're in FS9 was never this complicated.. was it?? To have to put FSX on it's own drive.. then leave it completely alone other than to add aircraft (or maybe this is wrong too) and put everything else on a drive which doesn't have your OS installed on it does seem rather OTT to me. Perhaps I'm just old fashioned. I'd wait until a 256-bit OS comes out capable of running 16-core CPU's and you might just see what you're looking for Perhaps M$ will release an FS OS in the future so we can all cut out the middleman

ATB

DaveB

[Paul K]

So you mean the Iris Vulcan goes on drive T: and Dave G's Duxford goes on V: yes ? Ok, off to PC World in me car with the back seats folded down.

Seriously though, thanks for the responses so far. I'm not sure I'm going to reinstall Gen X2, as I've never been 100% happy with it. ( So I can forget about Z:\ )

[Buggyman]

On my PC I use the C drive just for the OS and associated rubbish that Microsoft include in Vista. For FS9 and FSX I have a separate 500GB drive (D), which has nothing other than the 2 flight sims and add-ons which total around 300GB of disk space. Back up is on an external 1TB drive.

With all my FS on one drive I get around 75fps in fs9 and 35fps in FSX.

Having flight sim on one drive does mean it is easier to control and things like regular defrags are nowhere near as time consuming as when all files are on one drive.

Oh yes and I still get to occasional "...... has stopped running" So you can't win - which is why we all love MS:0)

Allan

[Garry Russell]

I wonder if you get a better engine sound/effect if you put each engine on a seperate drive


Seriosly I am unable to use the PC at the moment and I'll need to upgrade for FS.X but I have FS.9 on one 80GB drive And FS.X on another 80GB drive with everything else on 1TB C drive.

It does seem to help thing on what limited time I have had on the PC.