Dadtom65 Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 Hi. On my system I have a 120 Ssd for Windows and a 250 Ssd for FSX, plus a normal 500 gig hard drive and a 1tb normal hard drive. I allso have a 1tb Samsung portable drive that has all my Orbx back ups and other stuff. I was wondering if I bought a 2tb Samsung portable drive just for FSX seeing as they are a lot cheaper than Ssd drives, I mean you can buy the 2 tb one for about £65 where as an Ssd one even a 1tb is nearly £180 which being a pensioner I defiantly can not afford. As you might gather my 250 Ssd is filling up even though I use a junction link for Orbx stuff to another drive. I was just thinking if the portable drive is an alternative and if it would be fast enough to load FSX without any lags or other problems. Has anyone else used a portable drive for their FSX. I realise FSX would load slower with the drive, but it loads slow now I think because of the link, which is not a problem. Thanks for any help. Derek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stewart Hobson Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 I'm no expert, but USB3 with the external drive is nowhere near as fast as an internal drive would be, either a SSD or a HD--both are faster than a USB3 hook-up. At least this was the advice from my computer guru when I built my own rig back in January....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dadtom65 Posted December 3, 2015 Author Share Posted December 3, 2015 Hi. Sorry wrong price, for a 1tb Samsung Ssd it's more like £280. Derek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FalconAF Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 It would be slower. Not only for any FSX stuff on it during your initial start up (loading) of FSX, but more importantly when FSX needs to access anything on it during your FSX session once you start flying. One way to think about it is that you only have so much RAM memory in your computer, whether it be 4, 8, 16, 32, etc GB's of memory. You can only load so much into that memory during the initial loading of "FSX", then your computer will have to access the USB drive while flying to load whatever else you may need. That loading will be considerably slower from a USB drive than from an internal drive. How that would affect your simulator could depend on the file sizes that need to be loaded "on the fly". Photoscenery files can be huge, and any loading delay could result in blurry textures from slow processing, etc. It shouldn't be a problem for smaller files like AFCAD airport files that are only KB's in size, or relatively "small" scenery areas that your computer may be able to keep up with while flying, but for the most part you probably would run into some problems with areas the size of things like the ORBX "full fat" regions with their included photoscenery areas and high detail sceneries. As an aside, most people really don't benefit from putting ALL of their FSX files on an SSD drive. The SSD drive in most cases only speeds up the INITIAL loading of FSX when you start it. After that, a regular modern internal platter drive will load things fast enough to keep up (assuming you have a fast enough computer with hardware that isn't ancient). Putting large photoscenery areas on an SSD (like huge MegaScenery Earth files) isn't a bad idea, but other than that, a modern internal "disk" drive...many of which come with internal SSD cache capability in them already on the drive today...will do the job for you. Check out the prices of say a 2TB internal hard disk drive with it's included SSD cache capability. They are called "Hybrid Drives" and can be had for less than $100. I have 2 of them in my FSX Steam computer (a Quad Core with only a GTX285 GPU) and it runs FSX Steam with no loading problems with most of my sceneries on the Hybrid drives (FSX Steam and all ORBX products on my main C: system drive). I'm building a new computer after Christmas to be my "uber" flight sim computer and finally make the transition to P3Dv3 with it, and I'm gonna put a couple of the same 2TB Hybrid drives in it too. They work great for flight simming file access without needing to put everything on your C: system drive, or needing an expensive 2TB SSD drive for all your flight sim files/addons. Here'a a link to an example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178380 Other companies make them too, so different people may recommend different companies (ie - Western Digital, etc). I just linked you to one example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triplane Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 I seldom use FSX anymore having switched to P3Dv3. So, I decided to remove FSX from the SSD and reinstall it on a USB3 external drive. I'm using a 3GB 7,400 RPM Western Digital My Book. I have all the ORBX North America sceneries installed and other than the initial loading times being longer I see absolutely no performance difference versus the SSD. Of course, all mileage is variable... Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FalconAF Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 I agree with that. I was just offering a different solution in the same price range the OP said he was looking for. For a few dollars difference than what he was hoping to spend on a 2 TB external USB drive, he could get a 2 TB internal with close to SSD speed relative to what he would be using it for with FSX, Steam, or P3D. He posted the USB drive would cost 65 British Pounds (if I read that correctly) and the linked Hybrid drive in my post would only be 60 (if I did the online conversion correctly...which I may not have. Is a "British Pound" the correct conversion? I converted 65 "British Pounds" to 98 U.S. dollars. The Hybrid drive is $89 U.S., which converts to about 60 British Pounds). If I should have used Euros, then his 65 Euros would be about U.S. $70.67, making the $89 Hybrid drive about 81.8 Euro. In either case, he's still well below the 3-digit prices of a full SSD drive which is out of his budget range, and would be getting a much better solution than an external USB drive for his flight simulator setup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triplane Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 11 minutes ago, FalconAF said: I agree with that. I was just offering a different solution in the same price range the OP said he was looking for. For a few dollars more than what he was hoping to spend on a 2 TB external USB drive, he could get a 2 TB internal with close to SSD speed relative to what he would be using it for with FSX, Steam, or P3D. He posted the USB drive would cost 65 British Pounds (if I read that correctly) and the linked Hybrid drive in my post would only be 60 (if I did the online conversion correctly...which I may not have. Is a "British Pound" the correct conversion? I converted 65 "British Pounds" to 98 U.S. dollars. The Hybrid drive is $89 U.S., which converts to about 60 British Pounds). Indeed, like you, I think the internal drive would definitely be a better and probably less expensive solution. Derek, what pushed you toward an external drive? Can you do the installation of a new internal drive yourself and save the cost of having a local shop do it? If so, FalconAF may have the better solution as internal drives are almost always less expensive than external drives. Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dadtom65 Posted December 4, 2015 Author Share Posted December 4, 2015 Hi to you both. Yes I'm ok building PC's. Though last time I dropped the cpu, it looked ok but failed to start and ended up having to be sent back to the manufacture. Anyway that's another story. Never thought of a Hybrid drive, and had a feeling the Usb drive wouldn't be up to it. Thanks for the tips and will look into it. Tip from me, if you ever have trouble with your comps where it keeps rebooting and then the bios fails or gets corrupted like mine did last time and whent back to the place where I bought the components several times and they could find nothing wrong, but got a upgraded graphics card because they thought it was that. Check your on-off switch, because that was the culprit last time, it was ok for a bit and then pop out causing all sorts of problems. Thanks Derek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triplane Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 Good tip. Keep us updated. - Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dadtom65 Posted December 5, 2015 Author Share Posted December 5, 2015 Hi guys. Yep will be getting a hybrid drive, about £86 here. Think what I will do is swap my 120 Ssd with Windows on for the 250 one, I beleive all you have to do is transfer with the data cable and put all my FSX stuff onto the hybrid drive when I get one. Thanks for your help. Derek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FalconAF Posted December 5, 2015 Share Posted December 5, 2015 Glad to offer the suggestion for you. I think you'll like the hybrid drive solution better than the external USB one. Let us know how it works for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triplane Posted December 5, 2015 Share Posted December 5, 2015 9 hours ago, Dadtom65 said: Hi guys. Yep will be getting a hybrid drive, about £86 here. Think what I will do is swap my 120 Ssd with Windows on for the 250 one, I beleive all you have to do is transfer with the data cable and put all my FSX stuff onto the hybrid drive when I get one. Thanks for your help. Derek. Good choice.....Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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