Hi All,
I currently have a 250gb ssd in my pc which is used for windows and flight simulator only.
the ssd space is almost full and what i would like to know it this.
If i reinstall Flight Simulator on my normal 1tb hard drive will there be a playing different in FPS and speed or just loading times ?
Thank you and i cant afford another SSD
Pretty sure loading times and the experience of approaching airports would also differ. FPS during cruise shouldn’t matter but approaching airports could be different.
I guess it’s all a matter of getting used to, since getting a new SSD isn’t an option here.
When I first got MSFS2020, I ran it on a 2TB Western Digital “Black” HDD. The WD Black hard drives are considered to be one of the fastest HDD’s you can get (noise being a trade-off).
Back at the start of this year I switched to a 2TB SSD. I can say there is a definite performance increase, mainly in loading times. It was also evident that the HDD was causing intermittent stuttering/hitching, though I think this may have been down to the use of Rolling Cache. Switching to an SSD solved this, however I have since disabled rolling cache anyway as it’s not really required.
I never noticed any difference in FPS with either type of drive.
So if you switch to HDD I would only really expect loading times to increase, and the slight chance of introducing stutters. Other than that, for me the sim ran absolutely fine, despite the noisy HDD rattling away 
My pc specs are not high
Ryzen 3 3200g
16gb 2400mhz ddr4
rx580 8gb
I might as well then just leave it on my ssd and wait until i can afford another ssd.
During flight i get between 30 and 45fps and approaching is normally about 25fps so i cant get any lower. This is on med settings
I took my game files from a 250GB Samsung 960 evo ssd to hard drive and i can tell you that there is absolutely no difference between them.
same fps
same smothness …
same loading time ( 289gb community folder )
everthings like before …
idk why but this is my experience …
The main issue before SU5 was pagefile. With 16GB RAM, I was always using up to 42/48GB of pagefile, especially at larger airports, all the time which caused lots of stutter. The problem is that if windows is managing the pagefile, it can only use 1/8 of the drive the pagefile is on, so if it is a 240GB SSD, it can only use a max of 30GB, which will cause stutter. I have 3x 240GB SSDs, one for Windows, one for MSFS 2020 and the rolling cache on a third one. I set my windows SSD as the pagefile and whacked it up to 50GB.
That sort of fixed it, but it still stuttered a bit at big airports and I was worried about it wearing my SSD out, so I got another 16GB of RAM giving me 32GB. After that, it only ever used a max of 12GB for the pagefile a couple of times — and since SU5 I never use more than 16GB RAM so it looks like they fixed it lol. It was £50 for the RAM, but well worth it!
Stuttering before the fifth update was quite normal, it had nothing to do with page file in my opinion
I always put the page file in custom mode so I can choose the size myself just like the scrren shot …
What processor and graphic card are you using ?
Try overclocking your CPU a bit and see what happens …
i have ryzen 1700 3 MHz oc’ed to 3.7MHz …
1080
and i get 40-45 fps in major airports like narita / Dubai / …
Unfortunately, I was talking about MY system and what I SAW.
I tested it over and over again, probably 60 times or so with different settings repeated at different airports and aircraft.
Going from 16 to 32GB RAM fixed all my stuttering, especially when in the last mile on approach to larger airports. I could see my pagefile going up and down using three monitoring apps, and once I saw it going up to 50GB, so your opinion cannot explain that. After I went to 32GB, I have never seen it go above 12GB pagefile usage.
Similarly, it only ever used large amounts of pagefile at Heathrow, New York, Schiphol and Frankfurt … and at Gatwick, Stansted, Florida etc. it used much less. At local airfields it hardly used any. Those are facts, from observation :¬)
You can always try it yourself, turn it to auto managed and see how much it uses. If you have 32GB RAM it doesn’t need pagefile.
From the storage sizes highlighted, I’m guessing the community folder was already on a traditional drive then, which is why you’re not seeing much difference from before.
I really don’t understand why 50GB should be used for the page file …
it does not make sense at all …
so now you have page file enabled ?
as you said, 32 GB of RAM does not require page file stay enabled …
But in the case of stuttering, I still think it had nothing to do with ram ( i mean ram more than recommended ) , because many who had a lot of ram always suffered from stuttering until the fifth update came out …
The stuttering was due to the problems of the game itself and the coding, in my opinion, not the amount of ram …
no, it is on E which is my games storage …
Switching from 32gb to 64gb ddr4 all but eliminated stuttering for me prior to SU5 so it does have an impact.
Can’t recall what version we were on but I upgraded my ram in march during a period where there was a lot of stutter being widely reported as an issue. (and I was experiencing it also)
Prior to that I already had my pagefile and rolling cache on different nvme ssd’s.
I have subsequently disabled rolling cache as the function seems redundant if you rarely fly the same area.
Wow … once again … I am telling you what happened. I am not giving opinion, they are facts.
There are many different kinds of stuttering, MINE was fixed with more RAM and it stopped the system writing a pagefile.
It does not matter what your opinion is, that is what happened to me and my system.
You don’t understand why 50GB was used, but it was !!!
No amount of you keeping saying “i can’t believe it” is going to change what happened lol !!
Here are the logs from two of my test sessions in March … You can see that my 8GB graphics memory usage goes up in sync with the pagefile usage:
We get that what you did and saw on your system was fact – on your system under your flying conditions.
What you saw on your system does not necessarily translate into “all systems will see the same”.
I too would recommend OP increase memory from 16GB to 32GB if that is feasible, and I can say with extremely high confidence that would have a significant impact on this sims overall performance.
I can also say with high confidence that if the OP were to move the sim from SSD to HDD, there would be a significant decrease in performance. Please note, I didn’t say FPS. FPS is not the sole metric for performance.
While I don’t doubt that a decrease in IO bandwith won’t result in lower FPS, I would say that it would likely result in making pop-in a lot more obvious and laughable.
Because modern game and sim engines are designed to tolerate low disk IO throughput, and they way they do that is through popping in.
If one absolutely must move the sim from SSD to HDD, I would suggest to consider keeping your pagefile on SSD, and growing the pagefile if you can, and also keeping the flight sim cache pointing to a location on SSD.
The reason is that a very large pagefile will very likely be used by the OS and the sim to as disk cache, and effectively the HDD + pagefile on SSD becomes a hybrid.
And by keeping the flight sims specific cache on SSD, that keeps the stuff the sim specifically wants to cache on higher performing disk IO.
“does not necessarily translate into “all systems will see the same””
I have been constantly telling them that, so not sure what your point is there …
You really don’t want to be going back to HDD.
Forgetting the performance difference for a sec (which I found was very significant in my case), HDD would be a decent option if this simulator was a one-time install… But with the sheer amount of 20-50GB updates Asobo keep pushing out, it’s best to steer away from the unreliability of mechanical parts writing to disk so often and with such intensity.
I know you said that you can’t afford an SSD right now, but just think of the costs/aggravation in the long run.
Just get another SSD if you can. If you can’t afford it you’ll have to save up. The game will take a very long time to load on a HDD as opposed to an SSD. Especially if you have a community folder with 20+ gigs like me.
I agree with everyone…
I went from HDD to SSD then to NVme. I will NEVER, EVER, EVER go back to anything for the OS and MSFS but the NVme or at the least a SSD. The performance from Booting to getting into MSFS is a HUGE jump when going from HDD to NVme. If your Motherboard accomodates an NVme then by all means go that route and at the very least a SSD,
Hello,
I have moved your post to PC & Hardware. This is where discussions about hard drives, CPUs, memory, and other hardware (except peripherals like yokes and joysticks, etc.) take place.
My point is you have one system and that is your point of reference.
What I posted is a product of decades experience in gaming, flight sims, and high performance heavy compute workloads and capacity management.
