ManuelL 71 Posted September 12, 2010 Share Posted September 12, 2010 Hi, I was wondering if it is possible to run a large FSX installation stable. My poblem is that I like photosceneries a lot. Currently I have VFR Germany, VFR GenX UK and Switzerland Pro running. Add FTX, some mesh, some aircraft and smaller sceneries and you end up with ~300 GB distributed over several hard drives. I am now (again) at a point, where I think my only option is to re-install FSX from scratch (I do it ever 2-3 months or so). It is not running perfectly stable under normal conditions, but the AirbusX now seems to be the overkill. When running the Airbus, the sim crashes about 5 minutes into the flight. What I have tried previously is deactivating all sceneries I am not using in the library (or removing/adding them again as needed). From my experience this doesn't really help. Whenever an FSX installation reaches about 200-250 GB it is becomming increasingly instable. At one point I was thinking about running several FSX installations, but I dropped this thought as too complicated (I don't want to turn my FSX installation into a rocket science). I am wondering if someone else has the same issues and if there are any tips to get large installations to run better. Thanks! Kind regards Manuel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Hamilton 97 Posted September 12, 2010 Share Posted September 12, 2010 Could being distributed over several hard drives have anything to do with it? Things get loaded on the fly, your computer must spend an awful lot of time searching and accessing drives. Sounds like it might be time to uninstall sceneries you don't fly anymore, or at least click them off in the scenery library. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deputy Sheriffs mopperle 4162 Posted September 13, 2010 Deputy Sheriffs Share Posted September 13, 2010 Manuel, as Bruce already wrote, I think your problem is that your installation is spread over various disks, what makes IMHO no sense. My installation is about 230 GB at the moment on one 500GB disk and runs without any problems. The only products I run not on the same disk are tools like FSC, ASE, FSMap. They run on a different PC and connect via simconnect or FSUIPC to FSX. And what is very important: Defrag your disk regularly!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snave 466 Posted September 13, 2010 Share Posted September 13, 2010 Manuel, as Bruce already wrote, I think your problem is that your installation is spread over various disks, what makes IMHO no sense. My installation is about 230 GB at the moment on one 500GB disk and runs without any problems. The only products I run not on the same disk are tools like FSC, ASE, FSMap. They run on a different PC and connect via simconnect or FSUIPC to FSX. And what is very important: Defrag your disk regularly!!! Actually distributed load makes perfect sense - it's how servers work! Concurrent file access on conventional platter drives is ONLY possible with a RAID configuration (not advisable for FSX but ideal for servers) or with a program spread over more than one hard drive. And it is suitable for use with addon sceneries, or anything which `overlays` something in the vanilla FSX, even aircraft (if you create a new folder for them and point the FSX .cfg to that folder). The problem here is that you seem to have come to the conclusion that the issue is caused by the distributed load without any evidence whatsoever. Sim crashing `five minutes into a flight` does not indicate a problem attributable to hard drives, but probably one more related to RAM, CPU load, video card drivers or possibly sound card... what is the error message? If it's a non-messaged CTD then likely candidates include overheating, incorrect OS installation, or some `snake oil` tweak in your FSX .cfg that your system doesn't like. What have you tried to enable you to conclude that the problem IS only attributable to the spreading of the installation over more than one HD? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ManuelL 71 Posted September 14, 2010 Author Share Posted September 14, 2010 Hi, thanks for all the responses. I wouldn't think that my problem is related to hard drives (loading times or distribution over several drives). I am mainly using 2 large hard drives (750GB), which are filled less than 50%. In addition I automatically defrag all drives once a week. I almost never experience any issues with loading scenery on the fly. The only thing I can imagine in this respect is that some small files (e.g. effects) got lost on the way installing many addons so that FSX keeps searching for these files. Overheating might be a good point. I am using an overclocked i940 @3.8GHZ for a while now and haven't checked the temperatures in a while. I will run a test as soon as I have time. I am using fsx without any tweaks (in fact I had FSX re-do the fsx.cfg only resently to see if this will improve anything). My gut feeling (as in subjective without any real proof) is that my issues might be memory related. I am running 6GB with a 64bit win7, but I think I should look into managing the memory more closely. When re-installing FSX I will also try to minimize the amount of modules and external programs connecting to FSX, as I have a feeling these use up a lot of resource even if you are not using them at a time (add up fsrecorder, fsuipc, AES, an external weather engine, sometimes winchx and cumulusx, or aircraft features like a load manager and you get a lot of external programs interacting with FS at the same time). Kind regards Manuel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wycliffe 1 Posted September 16, 2010 Share Posted September 16, 2010 If I might just add my two pence worth. IMHO overclocking is a desperately foolish thing to do. It inccreases loads on your hardware components and really pushes stuff to its limits. I have never overclocked a chip and never will. Can't see the point. regarding having data installed across several discs you really should be thinking og getting it all onto one. I knwo you say you have no issues but the opportunity for software to be come corrupted or lost has to be higher. I have three drives in my system one runs Win7, one runs my serious apps such as Dreamweaver, Paint shop pro, mobile phone software etc also housing music and images and my final 300gb sata has FSX, Horizon photo scenery and all my addons. I have no issues I tun at 25 fps even though I can achieve 75/90 fps, I defrag once a month (you can lose data in a defrag). The best hardware item Ihave is a 500gig external harddrive and Acronis backup softawre and I backup my whole system onto a remountable image once a month. All works for me just fine. Wycliffe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharrow 107 Posted September 16, 2010 Share Posted September 16, 2010 Overheating might be a good point. I am using an overclocked i940 @3.8GHZ for a while now and haven't checked the temperatures in a while. I will run a test as soon as I have time. RealTemp 3.40 is as good as it gets and you can have it run in your system tray. Will also track max temps. Get it here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest M31 Posted September 18, 2010 Share Posted September 18, 2010 If I might just add my two pence worth. IMHO overclocking is a desperately foolish thing to do. It inccreases loads on your hardware components and really pushes stuff to its limits. I have never overclocked a chip and never will. Can't see the point. Absolute nonsense, both AMD and Intel recognise that overclocking enthusiasts exist, they provide overclocking unlocked multi CPU's for this very purpose, also their main stream CPU's are very overclock friendly too. Back to the OP point ... I have a very large FSX install I have 171 GB of that on a WD Velociraptor 300GB drive, my Win 7 OS is on a separate SSD drive with some remaining space used for UK photo VFR scenery on the SSD too, but putting SSD's aside for now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with putting scenery or otherwise on different drives on your comp if the software provides that option ... perhaps on older IDE only comps with older controllers, but modern comps that should be FSX aware, then no ... IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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