Separate Portions?

[IanHenry]

Hi,
I’m getting to the point where I am thinking of doing a fresh install of Windows7 64-bit and FSX / Acceleration etc.
My question is; is there any performance gain to be achieved from portioning my (1Gb) hard drive, so that I have the Windows installation and other flight sim programs (Rise of Flight, Black Shark & A-10 Warthog) on the “C” portion and FSX and associated programs on a different portion?
I know there are advantages to installing onto a separate hard drive, but do those benefits apply to portions as well, or are you just putting FSX further away from the centre of the hard drive?
Any suggestions from our resident computer experts will be gratefully received.
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Regards,
Ian.

[mjrhealth]

Yes there are many reasons for having FSX and other things on a seperate partition,

1. If windows needs a reainstall, you dont need to delete whats on the seperate partition.
2. Windows C: partition gets heavily fragmenetd due to the way wnidows works, keeping games on a seperate partition reduces the amount of fragmentation.
3. Of course a seperate drive would be better as read write time will be improved.
4. Better to instal FSX on a seperate drive, it loads faster.
5. Seperate partition overcomesw many os windows 7 security issues.
6. If you reinstall your games onto the seperate partiotion, after a reinstall, you usually keep you saved files, as long as you dont delete or uninstall it.

Hope thats enough reasons.

[stansdds]

I agree, partitioning is good so that the OS can clutter the C drive, everything else on another partition or partitions. I have found, though, that best performance often comes with two physical hard drives. Windows on one drive, and it can be a small drive, then flight sims on another drive. This allows Windows to do whatever it needs to do while not interfering with the sim as it reads data from its drive. When it comes to the fastest portion of a drive, the outer edge of the platter provides the fastest read and write times. I have two drives, first drive is partitioned into C:, an application partition, and a audio-visual file storage partition. My second drive is partitioned into FSX, then other games, then a storage area for files. FSX needs speed, so I set the first partition on my second drive as a 320GB partition just for FSX.

[Mathias]

Really? I have best experiences with keeping all applications together with the OS on the C partition and all file stuff ("my documents", downloads, work files etc) on a separate drive because that's what's causing fragmention in first place.
I barely get fragmentation on the C drive and I imagine that keeping all applications along with the OS on a single drive saves an I/O call from a second partition as you run your proggies.
One thing I always do after installing an OS and running defrag right afterwards is defining a fixed page file size what also helps avoiding fragmentation.

[txnetcop]

Really? I have best experiences with keeping all applications together with the OS on the C partition and all file stuff ("my documents", downloads, work files etc) on a separate drive because that's what's causing fragmention in first place.
I barely get fragmentation on the C drive and I imagine that keeping all applications along with the OS on a single drive saves an I/O call from a second partition as you run your proggies.
One thing I always do after installing an OS and running defrag right afterwards is defining a fixed page file size what also helps avoiding fragmentation.

I have had my FSX on a separate drive for over two years now and have had absolutely no problems. Partitioning didn't seem to stop FSX slowdowns and screw-ups over a period of time. Even though the C:drive must be accessed to load FSX on E: I have had zero problems in the two years I have had it loaded on E:.
Ted

[peter12213]

Was wonderin this myself, so even external drives work for fsx?