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SSD / HDD setup


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Building a new PC and trying to figure out the Drive situation. Thinking of getting a 500gb NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD but worried 500Gb won't be big enough. The PC will be mainly for just DCS & Xplane. Larger than 500gb are very expensive so thinking of getting a 4TB SATA 6Gb/s 256MB Cache 3.5-Inch for (Xplane) scenery and general storage.

In order to not slow anything down, does everything in DCS need to be on the main SSD?

What is the ideal drive setup (not withstanding everything on a giant NVMe SSD)

Should I invest in cheaper 2.5 SSDs for the storage drive instead of a fast HDD?

Is 500gb enough for the main boot drive? (I own the F18, F14, PG map and will probably buy a few more modules).

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https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147676

 

I'd pick that up 250gb on sale for like $55 USD for a boot/os/drivers drive

 

That leaves you with the option of a 1TB version of the drive above for $166, or a 500GB version for $90 for a dedicated simming drive.

 

or a 500gb NVME (970 Evo is $147+tax)

 

 

You don't want to game on an HDD. My 4TB HDD only gets used for storing large video projects and maybe really old games. NVME won't be a huge upgrade from a 2.5" ssd when it comes to a boot drive and gaming, at most it might allow for faster swap file access if your system needs it but I really can't say there's a benefit to it at all vs sata III SSDs even in that regard when it comes to gaming. . If money is a concern go for the 2.5" sata III drives. You should be happy with them.

 

970 Evo's aren't terribly priced though at the moment imo up to 500GB, so don't feel bad about whatever you do. If i didn't just splurge on a GPU I'd be thinking about replacing my two 2.5" ssd's with a 1TB 2.5" and maybe adding a 500gb NVME drive. I have DCS, another sim that takes less space, and maybe 1/2 other games on one of my 480GB drives, it's about half full. SSD's have better performance the more free space you have, although, for large file transfers and perhaps some production work NVME will leave sata III in the dust.

 

Summary - If it's just for DCS and Xplane, 2.5" sata III ssd's will do you just fine and they're pretty inexpensive at the moment. You technically don't need more than 500gb to have plenty of free space as a dedicated drive for your simming purposes for awhile to come. If you want other games and stuff, I'd go for a 1TB at least. And my personal preference is to have at least one additional drive that is separate from anything to do with my OS or drivers. system boot/loading speeds benefit largely jumping from HDD to SSD, as well as most games (which I include flight sims as games), where the jump from a sata III to NVME for gaming purposes doesn't offer much at all... but they take up less space and don't require addiontal wiring. And if you had to transfer data between them it'd be stupid fast.

 

I can't remember what review I watched, but boot times from HDD To SSD went from 40s-1m to like 11 seconds, and NVME booted in 6-8. The drives are like 6x faster but when it comes to loading a bunch of small files like OS drivers or game engine files it's just not the case. Either will make you scoff at your measely old HDD's though in any regard.

 

If I had the money to throw down on storage right now I'd personally try to refine it to no more than 3 drives, 250GB boot drive, 1TB gaming/simming drive, 4-8TB storage HDD. And sales happen frequently.. so I'd be waiting for sale prices. Which it seems there are quite a few right now. Don't forget you can always plan ahead and add more storage later. The benefit of the desktop is ease of adding drives and other hardware LATER if you want it.

 

$150 for a 500gb NVME drve is honestly tempting though. I paid close to that for a 240GB 2.5"sata III Kingston SSD when they were starting to drop in price >.<. That was like 3-4 years ago, and it still works perfectly despite no longer being in my system. same with the two 480gb sata III ssd's i got for even cheaper not much longer after that which I'm still using. I personally wouldn't go back to a traditional HDD for general purpose. Outside of my house my PC is one of the most valuable things I personally own so it's not like I'm rich. I use my computer daily for a lot of things and simming's honestly a cheaper hobby than some so it's all about how much you value your time spent vs your $$$.

 

And just to knock more dollars off, while i personally prefer separate drives for OS and my sims, you'd probably be fine with just the 1TB Sata III SSD with your OS and sims on it too if you really have no use other than xplane/dcs with a bit of room to spare. I just think two heads are better than one. Background tasks will generally be using the boot drive at least a bit.


Edited by Headwarp
Spoiler

Win 11 Pro, z790 i9 13900k, RTX 4090 , 64GB DDR 6400GB, OS and DCS are on separate pci-e 4.0 drives 

Sim hardware - VKB MCG Ultimate with 200mm extension, Virpil T-50CM3 Dual throttles.   Blackhog B-explorer (A), TM Cougar MFD's (two), MFG Crosswinds with dampener.   Obutto R3volution gaming pit.  

 

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Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I was not thinking of running my OS on an HDD that definitely has to be on an SSD/NVMe drive. So you don't think there would be much performance difference between an SATA III SSD and and NVMe SSD whilst in game?

What do you mean by having a seperate simming drive? Would this have it's own OS and you'd select the drive at boot up? Or would the OS be installed on the main boot drive but your simms installed on a seperate drive? Doesn't DCS have to be installed on the same drive as the OS?

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Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I was not thinking of running my OS on an HDD that definitely has to be on an SSD/NVMe drive. So you don't think there would be much performance difference between an SATA III SSD and and NVMe SSD whilst in game?

What do you mean by having a seperate simming drive? Would this have it's own OS and you'd select the drive at boot up? Or would the OS be installed on the main boot drive but your simms installed on a seperate drive? Doesn't DCS have to be installed on the same drive as the OS?

 

I have my operating system on an SSD drive and have a spare SSD drive installed. On the spare drive I install DCS. This spare drive is of course still in the OS environment but it's directory and physical space is separate from the actual OS. It's a good idea to keep them both separate for many reasons. This is what he means.......I think because it's quite common to do it this way. In fact all my games are on a separate drive within one OS environment.

 

I hope that makes more sense. BTW when I upgraded my PC with SSD drives it was the best performance boost I have seen for years. Really well worth it.


Edited by Mule
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Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I was not thinking of running my OS on an HDD that definitely has to be on an SSD/NVMe drive. So you don't think there would be much performance difference between an SATA III SSD and and NVMe SSD whilst in game?

What do you mean by having a seperate simming drive? Would this have it's own OS and you'd select the drive at boot up? Or would the OS be installed on the main boot drive but your simms installed on a seperate drive? Doesn't DCS have to be installed on the same drive as the OS?

 

By simming drive i just mean a drive you only install your sims on. DCS takes up about 130GB with all the maps and as your modules pile up. So by itself I wouldn't give it smaller than a 250GB drive.

 

For Xplane + DCS i'd have at least a 500GB drive and you might have room for a game or two other than your sims depending on the size of them while leaving more than enough free space for performance.

 

And no you don't need to install DCS on your C:\ drive. Every program you install on your PC should have an option to install programs to a drive and file directory of your choosing. I recommend installing system and device drivers to your boot drive, and your games/sims on a seperate drive/drives. During the windows install process you will choose the smaller drive to install windows and that drive will be your C:\ aka boot drive. You might have to google how to add a second drive in Windows 10 or your preferred OS. Once done by default the second drive will be "D:" IF you know your way around windows you can choose any drive letter of your choosing, but by default windows goes alphabetically from C:\

 

I keep my gaming drives separate from my boot (C:\) drive.. and i keep my hardware drivers on my C: drive as well. My games are on my D: and E: drives, and my storage is on F: , you can create folders within those drives. the format is Drive:\foldername\nextfoldername\filename.extension, or my dcs install dir and executable D:\games\DCS World Openbeta\bin\dcs_updater.exe - D: is the drive, the string of \folder\s\ is referred to as the path. You can have as many drives as you have sata ports in your system (at least when talking internal drives, you wouldn't want to run DCS on an external drive afaik), some of which may or may not be disabled with the installation of multiple NVME's, but still allowing for the same amount of drives total. The easiest way to navigate these is through file explorer in windows, with icons to click for drives, folders and files, but you can also navigate them using MS-DOS language in CMD Prompt, which if you ever run into a reason to use it, google will likely steer you down the right path. When you run the DCS installer it asks you if you want to install to the default location (likely C:\program files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\) or you can type in or browse for your own drive and path, which is my recommended method as it helps with organization as well as not fill up your boot drive.

 

Those samsungs are among some of the best sata III ssd's on the market and are a great deal atm (if you're in the USA at least). I'd just decide if you want a 1TB so you have space for other stuff should you decide to or a 500GB. It's nothing to sweat though as you can always change or just add or replace your drives at a later date. At any point for years on end.

 

And yes - for the purposes of gaming/simming I'm confident you'll be more than happy with the sata III SSDs. The NVME drives are overkill and bragging rights pretty much, also it's generally less stressful on your chipset's pci-e lanes to have less drives with more space. I.e 250GB + 1TB > 250GB+500GB+500GB. (Not even getting into raid setups. You won't need it on SSD's :) Grain of salt there as I have 4 drives connected and don't have issues. I don't think there's ever been a point that all 4 had disk usage at once.

 

*edit* Mule summarized my wordiness pretty well, so thank you. Hope I've helped, Bazmack, sorry for diving so deeply into the basics on this topic, I don't mean any offense by it if I'm telling you things that you already know outside of what drive sizes and types you'd want.


Edited by Headwarp
Spoiler

Win 11 Pro, z790 i9 13900k, RTX 4090 , 64GB DDR 6400GB, OS and DCS are on separate pci-e 4.0 drives 

Sim hardware - VKB MCG Ultimate with 200mm extension, Virpil T-50CM3 Dual throttles.   Blackhog B-explorer (A), TM Cougar MFD's (two), MFG Crosswinds with dampener.   Obutto R3volution gaming pit.  

 

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I have:

- 250gb NVMe for Windows

- 2x 4 TB (~8TB total) HDD in RAID 0 for steam and other games

- 500 GB SSD for files and non game programs

- 500 GB SSD dedicated for DCS

 

500 GB is likely just barely enough. I would have a 250 dedicated for windows and a 500 GB for those two games.

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Buy 2 NVMe, 1 for OS and 1 for APPS, 250GB + "what you can afford, not below 500GB".

 

 

That's what I would do if I had no current drives.

 

 

You can also buy a 2TB 970Evo and call it a day, tho I prefer the OS on it's own drive and dcs/apps on another, call me old fashioned.

Gigabyte Aorus X570S Master - Ryzen 5900X - Gskill 64GB 3200/CL14@3600/CL14 - Asus 1080ti EK-waterblock - 4x Samsung 980Pro 1TB - 1x Samsung 870 Evo 1TB - 1x SanDisc 120GB SSD - Heatkiller IV - MoRa3-360LT@9x120mm Noctua F12 - Corsair AXi-1200 - TiR5-Pro - Warthog Hotas - Saitek Combat Pedals - Asus PG278Q 27" QHD Gsync 144Hz - Corsair K70 RGB Pro - Win11 Pro/Linux - Phanteks Evolv-X 

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