XP & Raptor installation

[Harold]

The reason for using these partitions is that if I need to reinstall Windows (and I seem to be doing that quite a lot ) I don't lose all my other stuff ...

But your comment makes sense ... I'll ask Michael to comment on this without revealing his secrets

[ctjoyce]

You could be correct, however I've never noticed a preformance drop.

Cheers
Cameron

[NicksFXHouse]

[quote]
Obviously I'm not that experienced

Nick & Cameron: are you saying that it's better to have the FS9 dir on the same drive as the OS?

I don't even have it installed on the same physical drive. I have two SATA drives (300 & 120) and divided them into several partitions; C=OS, D=Apps, E=Docs, F=Music, G=Non FS Games, H=Films

On the other drive I have I=Vista and J=FS9

There's some additional future space left in the K drive ... which I hardly ever use, exept for maybe storing some temporary work ...

My FS9 library is on a 120 GB mobile HDD. On that I store everything I download for FS9.

I'm pretty happy with this set up and am not very likely to change it, unless you say I can get a big increase in FS9 speed/sharpness if I alter my setup ... after your tips in the "AA on the card and in the Sim?" I've locked the sim at 24 FPS and it seems pretty happy with that

The sharpness of ground textures could be better and load faster but I'm OK with it ... what would you advise in this situation?

I'm also leaning heavily towards the FS-GS Service ... but need to get a headset for that first

[NicksFXHouse]

The reason for using these partitions is that if I need to reinstall Windows (and I seem to be doing that quite a lot ) I don't lose all my other stuff ...

But your comment makes sense ... I'll ask Michael to comment on this without revealing his secrets

There is not 'secret' to drive optimizing... Michael has a system of clalibration and how to set up both the system and FS configuration for optimal graphics performance in FS9 based on the system and video card being used.... and he should recommend you make chnages to the install and disk layout based on what you are doing wrong with the system but those drive recommendations are not not secrets.


and YES, I would think you will be reinstalling because I am sure Michael knows that running FS9 from another drive, ESPECIALLY another partition on a seperate drive, is not a good thing to do.

[NicksFXHouse]

You could be correct, however I've never noticed a preformance drop.

Cheers
Cameron

You will never see it in a benchmark program

its called real world use

The only way you would see proof of in benchmarking would be to run the Windsows performance Counters and monitor the Disk I/O between running a single and multiple drive setup

You will find the I/O is significantly less and therefore all those CPU cycles go where they are needed

[Harold]

Wow ... that is a lot of information! Thank you Nick & Cameron. But I'll stick with this setup for now as I'm happy with it

[flyingbart]

Wow guys theres certainly some information there from last night awsome thanks for all your inputs. So basically i need to get partition magic and hopefully do away with the partition and then err o yes i shall re-install my windows os to my raptor drive. hope this works im still not sure how you do this array set up so i will just keep everything together on my raptor. hope im doing the right thing i shall see what you guys say before i go ahead with this. i know i shall have to re-install all my programs that are on my current os drive but never mind only 30gb of stuff to re-load
cheers guys
Flyingbart  

[flyingbart]

Daft question guys is it possible to copy everthing from my C drive which when it has been de-partitoned is my windows os drive 80gb all to my raptor drive or will windows crash
cheers flyingbart

[NicksFXHouse]

Daft question guys is it possible to copy everthing from my C drive which when it has been de-partitoned is my windows os drive 80gb all to my raptor drive or will windows crash
cheers flyingbart

Why dont you do a clean install just to be sure... then follow this thread on how to set up and clean out windows for best performance... which includes a proper defrag.. it starts about 5 posts down and you can follow it from there...

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/ ... 1;start=30

[flyingbart]

Thanks Nick
I have recently defragged my c drive and re formatted so i know everthing is ok . Re-installed FS9 about a month back. My problem now is this ive bought partition magic i have taken out my partition which was on my C drive yeehaa 70gbs of space which has my windows xp os on. This has helped rather a lot thanks to you guys although still a bit jumpy. I now have a clean raptor drive sat doing nothing because i have copied my FS9 from the raptor to the C drive so that my os and FS9 are on the same drive . How do i get both onto the raptor can i use my windows disc and preform to install on the raptor or what. i have kept FS9 on the raptor just incase. sorry for the headache guys . interesting reading that link Nick cheers.
flyingbart

[ctjoyce]

On your next boot, unplug all drives except the raptor, install XP on the raptor, restart with all your drives back on, and reformat your old C drive.

Cheers
Cameron

[flyingbart]

Nice one Cameron never thought of that will do
cheers Flyingbart

[NicksFXHouse]

Install XP, install ALL your motherboard drivers, Install the sound drivers, install the network drivers and THEN install the video drivers.

Once complete, make sure SP2 is installed and go to Windows update to make sure you have ALL the updates for windows. It may take 5 or 6 REPEAT returns to windows update to get all that right and installed.

Install all you software. DO NOT migrate software.

Once complete, install FS9 CORRECTLY into the new OS/Raptor. this insures the registry and other files register properly to the OS.

The last step is up to you. You can at that point migrate the entire Flight Simulato 9 folder overwriting the one that installed from the CD which will put everything back however starting clean, I would probably reinstall everything from scratch. MAKE SURE you install the FS9.1 update correctly by placing it in the Flight Simulator 9 folder BEFORE running it.

I would also NOT migrate the old FS9.cfg file.. start clean.

After all that is done, follow the thread I posted to clean up the system and Winders installation. It generally takes 8-12 hours to do that process right given the defrag time.

If you are not running good professional defrag software such as O&O defrag, your defrag results WILL be limited.

[flyingbart]

Nice one nick thanks for that i will just use windows de-frag utility if thats any good
flyingbart

[NicksFXHouse]

Nice one nick thanks for that i will just use windows de-frag utility if thats any good
flyingbart

nope...

in my opinion it will help but will leave the drive in what I would consider a 70-80% unoptimized condition