the order of things

[krazyj]

Hey Guys,

Once I get my new rig I plan to install P3D on it alond with GSX, ASN, REX4, PMDG 777 among others. I will have the main computer and then my old one for the periphials ( spell check )

I havent been able to find a clear answer of what goes where. the new rig has a SSD ( 240GB)

so what goes where ?

do I install windows 10 on the SSD ? and P3D ? and what can run on the slave machine ?

thanks for any assistance

[OldAirmail]

Oh boy, where to start.


Lets start at the most basic part - DON'T buy Prepar3d V2.5!

Most companies don't charge for small, incremental, updates. But they do charge for full version updates.


So no charge for V2.2 to V2.5. But for a full version from V2.5 to V3.1, you'll probably have to pay the full price.

If you're lucky, there may be a short period where you can get it at a discount, say 50% to 80% off the full price.

And if your timing is right you might be able to buy V2.5, and get V3.X free if the newer version is released within a few months of your purchase. If your timing is right.


And although no one is, officially, saying that P3d V3.X is about to be released, there is some reason to believe that it might be coming soon.

See - Potential Prepar3d V3 Clue

Bottom line - if you have FSX, install it on your new system until Prepar3d V3 comes out.



"the new rig has a SSD ( 240GB)"

My system isn't cutting edge anymore, but I do rather well anyway.

My drive situation reflects the dropping price of SSDs.

The C: drive is a 256GB SSD. My system is on it, of course. Also, some programs will install to the C: drive without giving you any choice.

My secondary drive, E:, is a fast 1TB drive with a large cache. This is where I install all of my other programs.

My flight sim drive is another 256GB SSD.

Here, in the US, a 250 SSD will sell on Amazon for less than $100 - Samsung 850 EVO 250GB $90

Hopefully the prices are relatively low where you live.



As to what goes where.

If all you have is the single drive, then let it install where ever it wants to.

Some recommend ANY place other than C:\Program Files (x86). I've never had a problem on Windows 7 Pro, but others have.



If you are able to have two, or more, drives, let me suggest that you try this, it makes life MUCH easier.

When it's time to install Prepar3d, it's going to point to this location - C:\Program Files (x86)\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D.

Simply change the drive letter to that of your other drive.

In my case that was F:\Program Files (x86)\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D.

Any time that another program wants to find Prepar3d I just have to change one letter.

[krazyj]

i have a 240gb SSD and a 2TB normal hard drive.

and did notice that 3.1 may be out relatively soon so I am holding my breath.

but to get this right,

I was planning to partition my SSD into a system and an P3D drive and then run the periphials of the slave machine would that work ?

[OldAirmail]

Windows 10 should definitely go on the SSD.

But partitioning it would make life more complicated in the future.

Remember I said The C: drive is a 256GB SSD. My system is on it, of course. Also, some programs will install to the C: drive without giving you any choice.?

Well, this is what happened to my C: drive over the past two years.



Sometime soon I'll have to replace the C: drive with a larger SSD.



Another reason that partitioning won't help to make your system as fast as it could be, has to do with the drive controllers on your computer.

With the C: drive partitioned you'll have one controller reading information from one "half" of the drive, then stopping to read data from the other "half" of the drive.

Yes, this will happen very fast, but it'll do this continually until the computer has all the info that the various programs need.

On the other hand, any computer less than 15-17 years old will have no problem reading two different drives at the same time if they're on different controllers.


Totally unimportant to 99.99% of most people, I bought my motherboard because it has multiple SATA 3 (6Gb/s) controllers built into it.

Actually, two controller chipsets. More detail than you want to know, but still....... Possibly useful to someone else.



All three of my drives are on separate controllers. Overkill? Maybe.



Long story short, FSX, Prepar3d, X-Plane, whatever, will need to access data/instructions from the C: drive to do what it needs.

If you can spread the data transfer over two connectors/drives, all the better.

And if you can afford just one more drive, you'll be amazed at how well FSX/Prepared will run.

I have less problems, and better than average speed on a slower machine than some people do with a MUCH faster system.



One last bit that may be more info than you want or need.

Because modern computers can read from two drives at the same time, I moved my swapfile/pagefile to the E: drive.

I don't know if this has sped things up, but it reduced the amount of writes to the SSD (hopefully prolonging it's life), and leaves more useful space on that drive.