I agree !. I do not have anything on a mechanical drive except external Sata BACKUPS. I maintain backups of my system drive and MSFS. Makes for a quick and easy recovery in event of a failure. I cannot imagine life without a reliable backup.
My system has 2 1TB NVMe drives, as well as a 2TB SATA SSD. I also have a 4TB mechanical for storage, and an external 10TB mechanical for long-term archival storage and backups.
If possible, SSD or NVME. 3-4 years ago those items were overpriced and my answer would be different. Now the benefit and the lower cost outweighs the use for mechanical. For me mechanical drives are strictly storage / photos/ drone videos etc where speed does not matter. All installed programs go on SSD/NVME. Within any given 30-60 days period there is always a good sale somewhere; (i.e There is a 1TB NVME drive for $79 on bhphoto at the moment for example ) .
For those saying it has no benefit other than load times, it may not always be the case as it depends on what kind of add-ons you have. The other day I purchased ~20GB of Himalayas mesh (~$10 USD from Orbx for those wondering) for that I think there is benefit of it being on an fast drive as the area maps load while you fly and when I am flying in a jet I think it does help in reducing stuttering issues.
Wow even LONGER loading times are possible?! I already watch YouTube videos to spend the half an hour this simulator takes between clicking on the desktop icon until the main menu is finally usableā¦
And the Community folder and the complete sim is already stored on the fastest NVMe driveā¦
Hm loading times would probably take 30 hours plus when having the community folder on an external mechanical drive. āTomorrow at 3pm I want to fly - better click that flight sim icon on the desktop now!ā 
ThatĀ“s why I always say I need mainboards with more NVMe slots than just wo, because 2TB NVMe prices are insane while 1TB NVMeĀ“s are cheap.
ItĀ“s waaaay cheaper installing 4x 1TB NVMe`s than buying 2x 2TB.
But do these mainboard designers listen? Noā¦
The good thing is it is still possible installing games on an external mechanical game drive. Resident Evil 7, Alien Isolation, Resi2, Dishonored 2 - everything runs fully fine maxed out and has just longer loading times but runs without any in-game performance issues (for example 20 seconds loading time compared to 2-3 seconds in Alien Isolation).
But no one should try doing this with the Flight Simulator, loading time may take up to two weeks when having the full sim and not only the Community folder on an USB drive
Joke aside has anyone put the Community folder on a slower drive (internal or external) - how long does it really take until being in the Flight Sim main menu?
Does anyone know if these drives are any good?
At first glance Iād say thatās a scam. Youāll not get a 16TB SSD for $109.
I agree, has to be a scamā¦ You would not get a 16TB USB ssd for that price. Something is not quite right with this business. Their customer service email has a gmail addressā¦ really ?
Itās been all over Facebook for weeks now. As they say, if it seems to good to be true it probably is.
I have run out of storage space on all my drives.
Because there is no third slot for a third NVMe the next drive will be another 5, 8 or 12 Terabyte Western Digital Black Game Drive, or a 1TB SSD.
The NVMe holding Flight Sim 20 and DCS Flight Sim is also running out of storage space so making a Community folder on a different drive will become necessaryā¦
ItĀ“s not a scam, I have a 32GB flash drive for 30 bucks.
My good and solid Apacer Panther SSD with 237GB which is used for the operating system cost 40ā¬ at Alternate store, and my Western Digital SSD Plus 931GB cost 80ā¬ at Media Markt.
Only NVMe drives are expensiveā¦ no āinsanely overpriced as hellā would be more appropriate.
Heās says 16TB not GB. Thereās a huge difference between TB and GB.
it depends a lot on the usage, but if you go by the number of read/write only, ssdās have less than hddās
this is the main reason they need extra temp file space, so not to overwrite the same blocks as often
if your storing and just reading data ssdās can even last longer, but then the way they fail completely tends to make them not as good for this type of application anyway (unless its a raid system or backed up regularly such as used in Commercial environments)
where ssdās shine for us end users is the read and write speed for games/graphics apps and thats also where they can be burned out faster if you dont leave the necessary temp data space - just make sure they have that and they will last fine
I am on a 13 year old PC.
- i7 920 @ 3.5Ghz
- MSI X58 mobo
- 12GB RAM
- GTX 1060 6GB
Windows 10 is on a Crucial SSD
MSFS is on an Western Digital Spinner
With 120 mods in Community I can be inside a plane from launching the game in 5 to 6 minutes. Not a deal breaker for me. The Community grows at a huge rate.
Entire game = 191GB
Community = 41GB
If I put it on SSD Iād have just 20GB free space left so elected to install to spinner.
Congratulations on your old rig and still getting the most out of it.
We all dance to the sound of a different drum and yours sounds
āResounding!ā
Happy skies
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DonĀ“t worry it takes as long (but most of the time even significant longer) with Ryzen 7 and NVMe your computer is not bottlenecking anything.
Well 12GB GDDR3 RAM might be a problem when using bigger scenery rendering radius. 32GB fast RAM is very useful for running a computer (for example when having lotĀ“s of YouTube audiobooks tabs open to listen one after another - this alone can sometimes consume 5-8GB RAM, in combination with Photoshop open and flying at the same time is even a problem with fast 16GB.)
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Thank you! It has served me very well, I have started thinking of finally upgrading.
For sure! SSD is awesome for windows but I dont see any gains while IN a game. The cost/gb still favors massive spinners and I go for the 7200RPM ones which arent bad. I have begun thinking of building a new powerful rig but its impossible to source gfx cards so I will likely have to buy a prebuilt. Deciding on which processor to go for to get good MSFS performance! It will have 32GB RAM, I will not go below that.
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Currently MSFS reads and writes a large number of files and a number of large files during each flight not counting the Rolling Cache. Putting MSFS on a NVME is the best option if it can be affordable. SSD is a second, more affordable option. IMHO HDDs should be avoided because they are slower than SSDs, require more on-going maintenance, and since they are mechanical they are noisier than SSDs.
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Install an nvme in a pcie slot? Iāve done that to add additional storage.
No chance to avoid mechanical drives. These ridiculous 512GB to 1TB SSD and NVMe storage sizes could never store all my date a single one of my 110ā¬ Western Digital Game Drives (mechanical disk, one 5TB and one 8TB) has more storage space than all five SSDĀ“s and NVMeĀ“s combined together.
As long as SSD developers donĀ“t start to bring on some serious 4-6TB SSD and NVMe drives for a normal price I will continue using mechanical drivesā¦ 
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I cant argue that when it comes to data access speeds SSD and nVME will always win.
However it is not a factor for me. I have mechanical drives in laptops and PCs that are between 7 to 10 years old. Some in the old laptops are 14 years old. They have worked flawlessly.
I donāt use Rolling Cache or Manual Cache.As for noise - I donāt notice any. The drive mounts in the PC are very good. The nice hum of the cooling fans is all I hear. My Windows 10 is on SSD and its very fast, thats all I need - a fast snappy OS.
The cost of the mechanical drives is still the best. I am going to get an 8TB mechanical drive and out of curiosity compared the other 8TB drive prices:
- 8TB mechanical = $218
- 8TB SSD = $774
- 8TB nVME= $1,720
Exactly. I am the same! The Community folder grows at a massive rate. Games these days are just huge installations. Until the cost/GB of these SSDs and nVME drops drastically for me they are a no go. I just make sure I only buy good branded spinner drives (Samsung, Western Digital, Hitachi etc.)
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