The build quality is not very high. The plastic case rattles a lot. I can't hear it inside my unibody MBP, but it might be annoying if there's a vent over the hard drive bay or if it isn't secured very well inside your laptop.
OldAirmail wrote:Looking at that chart above reminds me that I have to get back to work on re-assigning the buttons.
But like a little kid in a toy store, I'm running first one direction, and then the other.
Prepar3d is just taking over my time. In a GOOD way.
HARDWARE, HARDWARE, HARDWARE
So, What's new?
SSD's
Anyone who has read some of my previous posts knows that I'm a strong advocate of SSDs.
Yes, they are more expensive than a spinner. BUT you can now get a usefully sized SSD for a reasonable price.
Side note - My first SINGLE sided .floppy drive cost $525 back in the '80s. In 2014 dollars, that's probably something like $1500.
A re-cap
A while back I bought a 1TB Western Digital drive, and a Samsung 250GB SSD. The SSD became my boot drive. It also became the home of the FSX files.
Everything else (as much as possible, anyway) went to the WD drive with 64MG of cache.
This worked out well, except for two things; MORE scenery, and Prepar3d V2.2 with MORE scenery.
As I use Prepar3d MUCH MORE than FSX nowadays, the delay from starting Prepar3d to actually being ready to fly in Prepar3d has started to bother me.
The first possibility was to remove FSX completely, and install P3d on the C: drive.
Aside from not wanting to completely remove FSX yet (it now works as a test bed to work out problems with software), there's still that "MORE scenery" problem.
So I started looking into larger SSDs.
And, although the prices for large SSDs has dropped, it's still more than I wanted to spend.
OPTION 2 - Buy a "used" SSD.
In the US, if something has been returned to the retailer in an opened condition, it can't be resold as "new".
Sell it as refurbished, reconditioned, used - fine. But if the box has been opened, sell it as new, no.
That's not to say that things don't get sold as new if it doesn't look like it was opened, though.
In todays society, kids get awards for "trying". It doesn't matter if they succeed. If they "try", then they're congratulated as winners.
The end result is that a great many people think that they are capable of doing anything. And if they try and fail, HEY, that's not their fault. They tried.
So where is all this whining going?
Amazon & Newegg get a great deal of stuff returned simply because the purchaser hasn't got a clue as to how to use it!
"THIS IS A PIECE OF CR*%! I CAN't CLONE MY 2TB HARD DRIVE ONTO IT!!!"
Yes. Reviews like that are out there.
One complaint for the SSD that I bought goes like this;The build quality is not very high. The plastic case rattles a lot. I can't hear it inside my unibody MBP, but it might be annoying if there's a vent over the hard drive bay or if it isn't secured very well inside your laptop.
Well. The SSD does have a plastic cover, not steel or aluminum. But you know what? I'm not going to be using it as a step stool.
Rattling? Well, if I tap on the plastic casing it is flexible. The plastic cover that protects against accidental contact with any of the internal circuitry will make contact with the top of the chips inside the case.
BUT THIS IS AN F-ING SOLID STATE DEVICE! IT HAS NO MOVING INTERNAL PARTS TO CAUSE ANY RATTLING!!!!!
As usual, I'm going way beyond simple reason to make my point.
Stupid people, are stupid. And just because something has been returned, that doesn't mean that it's bad.
And, sometimes, people just click on the wrong item. It's not bad, they just made a mistake.
Back to the point.
If there's a big enough difference in price, I don't mind buying "used" from Amazon or Newegg.
What I bought was a Transcend Information 256GB SATA III. At this moment it's being sold for $119.
If there's any speed difference between this and my Samsung SSD, I can't tell it.
But was it worth it? ABSOLUTLY!
Although these are the numbers for Prepar3d and not FSX, the difference should be similar.
Also note that I have the "Prepar3D Training Scenario Setup" open up in stead of going directly to a flight. This will produce a two step timing.
If you have a faster system, your timings should be better.
Here are the load times from a fast hard drive with a large cache, and the new SSD.
Side note - the SSD has almost 100BG of Prepar3d & scenery data on it.
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