Question on Sandisk USB Flash Drive.

[DaveB]

I had Win7 on a 120gb SSD and I'd not put FSX on what's left even though it would.. in it's basic form, fit. Having a small drive for your OS invokes good HD housekeeping as a necessity as your free space will, in time, disappear. My advice.. don't even consider it. SSD's need a certain amount of space to 'manoeuvre'.

ATB
DaveB

[blanston12]

Actually the reason is marketing! When a disk maker says its 128gb they mean it's 128,000,000,000 bytes of storage. But a computer science person will tell you 1gb is 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes so it's really 119.209gb of storage.

[Airspeed]

I had Win7 on a 120gb SSD and I'd not put FSX on what's left even though it would.. in it's basic form, fit. Having a small drive for your OS invokes good HD housekeeping as a necessity as your free space will, in time, disappear. My advice.. don't even consider it. SSD's need a certain amount of space to 'manoeuvre'.

ATB
DaveB

Interesting comment, Dave.
My meagre understanding was that the controller looked for the data, and free space wasn't so much of an issue as for mechanical drives.
How would you feel about an additional SSD dedicated to FSX? Everything seems to say that they are much faster.

[DaveB]

Hiya Mike..

When I got the 120gig SSD, I was told not to fill it. 20-25% free (if the old grey stuff serves me right) would be the max I should take it to. I had FSX on a dedicated conventional drive (512gig) and a-n-other 512gig conventional drive for files and junk. The 120gig OS drive got infected with a nasty bug and was replaced with a 250gig (or thereabouts) SSD and this is how my rig stands. OS on the SSD, FSX on a dedicated platter drive (Sata3) and a further platter drive(Sata2) for files and junk. The Junk drive isn't actually junk as it has my GenX and Earthsims scenery on it but I use it as a depository. The 120gig eventually got reformatted and sits as G: drive which has a clean install of FS9 which I use for beta testing. I could have used it for FSX (the 120gig SSD) but feared that FSX would fill it rather rapidly and it would need fairly vigorous housekeeping to keep it sane.. just FSX on it with aircraft located on another drive. This seemed too much trouble so I left FSX on the 512 sata3.

Ideally.. FSX would go on a further SSD (rather than the platter disk or your OS disk) so yes.. go for an SSD for your OS and a further SSD for FSX. It all comes down to cash in the end and while the price of SSD's has fallen.. they're still expensive when compared to conventional drives.
ATB
DaveB

[JohnD]

I've recently purchased a new PC and took the opportunity to do a complete re-install.

I have a C: drive for the W10 OS, which is a Samsung EVO 850 SSD with a capacity of 250Gb. (Bit OTT actually 120Gb would have been OK)
D: drive with FSX and P3D plus all scenery installed. It's also a Samsung with a 500Gb capacity.
E: drive which is an HDD for all other storage requirements and has a capacity of 500Gb.

The D: drive is filling fast and I will uninstall FSX when I'm happy with P3D. I only use FSX for testing at the moment. That will give me a total free space of about 90Gb.

It does seem to load the scenery faster and I don't get scenery lag at all.

If funds allow I would recommend using an SSD and try to keep the OS and flight sim(s) separate.

My purchase was based on the very knowledgable people on this site for which I am very grateful.

Regards
John

[paulsl]

20-25% free (if the old grey stuff serves me right) would be the max I should take it to.

The "rule" for HDDS with Windows was always leave at least 10% free. I'll be doing the same with any SSDs; I don't believe the 20% thing. I *think* theoretically you shouldn't need to leave any space free on an SSD, but I expect you'd end up with frustrating 'disc full' messages even though Windows was saying there is free space. It's all to with the way the o/s looks to place files.

One thing to think about. When an SSD fails, it fails big time. The jury's out on whether you can get anything off a dead one. Consensus seems to be that if you can it will be expensive. When an HDD fails some gifted folk can recover data from them relatively easily. For either type three simple rules... 1) backup 2) backup 3) backup. 1Tb+ drives and good backup software are cheap enough compared to what you might have spent on add-ons.

What a lot of pretentious preachy twaddle. I'll get my coat....

Paul

[Nigel H-J]

Thanks for all your comments and questions, have certainly learnt a thing or two here. One final question I have and although it won't be until sometime next year can anyone advise me if they have had any computers from PCSpecialist and if so would you recommend them?

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

Regards
Nigel.

[JohnD]

Hi Nigel

Yes I would recommend them. I have purchased two systems in the last 7 years. Its very easy to select your requirements and order. Delivery was a few days longer than they suggested. But all was OK when it arrived. You can pay a bit extra for fast track if needed.

Regards

John

[Airspeed]

"For either type three simple rules... 1) backup 2) backup 3) backup."

Totally agree with 1 & 3, unsure about 2.

Haven't had any power blips last few days, and the Netgear NAS Duo has been on continual backup of any files that change.
Keeping my fingers crossed that it's all been working properly, as I've never tried to recover anything.

[Nigel H-J]

Hi John and very many thanks, Won't be until next year I know but always like to look think and plan ahead!!

Regards
Nigel.