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External SSD for XP11?


LTCSZ

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Hi LT.

Not a direct response to your message / request, but if you want to save some space, especially if you run more that one version, is to use Short cuts to your large Scenery files, or keep them on a different drive, but that may slow you down if not SSD. XP11 Scenery files can be very large depending on the ZL.

I do not think using SSD externally, unless you have a fast bus, some MOBOs have fast IO connectors in the back, something other than USB, would work very good.

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I'd frown against going with an external hard drive. There are many facets going with an external HDD. The biggest would be the speed at which the HDD is accessed via USB. The second being USB being used like an internal HDD may not function 100% like you think it will. The USB connection can and will fail mid read or write and also the drive letter may change from one drive letter to the next thereby messing up the paths you have set for scenery and what have you in X-Plane.

 

You are better off buying an internal HDD. And you can pick up a massive internal platter-based HDD cheap compared to an SSD of the same size. I highly recommend an enterprise grade Hitachi. You can get a 2 TB for around $50, which would practically be the same cost as an external.

 

Here's one that might suit the bill. https://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-HUA723020ALA641-Ultrastar-7200RPM-Enterprise/dp/B00HRLI2FU/ref=sr_1_52?ie=UTF8&qid=1546555442&sr=8-52&keywords=HGST

 

Keep in mind that an enterprise HDD isn't going to be necessarily quite. It may in fact be loud. But you get about 2 million hours mean time before failure.

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Despite what the naysayer posted, USB 3\3.1 attached SSD drives are reliable and do perform near "enterprise HDD" speeds. The previous poster's frowning must be based on old, outdated information, old tech - how USB2 worked and, I suspect, a lack of real experience with current USB3 devices. I've even run RAID with four USB3 drives on Linux servers, and it's rocket fast, solid and stable.

 

PNY, Samsung, and Western Digital all sell USB3 SSD external drives, though the prices leap up past 250GB capacity.

 

My most frequent problem with such drives is Windows 10 x64 too often failing to recognize the USB3 drives when they're connected or at boot time, something Microsoft has not properly fixed. The same drives mount okay via USB2 ports, but that's not a solution for this very common problem, one I've observed on multiple computers. Mac OS X, Ubuntu Linux, even older versions of Windows always mount the USB3 drives that I use via USB3 ports. Not so with Windows 10.

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Hi Dave and everyone.

I would appreciate some additional information, benchmarks on your IO devices / hard drives, internal and external. I've done many tests over the years and never found an external to be as fast, given the same specs, as an internal.

Can you post an image of your External performance. I use ATTODiskBenchmark.

Thank you.

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Hi Dave and everyone.

I would appreciate some additional information, benchmarks on your IO devices / hard drives, internal and external. I've done many tests over the years and never found an external to be as fast, given the same specs, as an internal.

Can you post an image of your External performance. I use ATTODiskBenchmark.

Thank you.

 

No, an external drive won't be as fast as the fastest internal drives, but these days they are plenty fast for something like X-plane or FSX. The latest USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt 3 interfaces in particular are fast enough for both external HDDs and SSDs. And for those with a laptop an external drive might be the only, or most cost effective, option to expand storage.

 

The article below gives a good overview of the different interface and drive options and where the bottleneck would be.

 

https://www.akitio.com/information-center/achieve-best-transfer-speeds-external-drives

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Despite what the naysayer posted, USB 3\3.1 attached SSD drives are reliable and do perform near "enterprise HDD" speeds. The previous poster's frowning must be based on old, outdated information, old tech - how USB2 worked and, I suspect, a lack of real experience with current USB3 devices. I've even run RAID with four USB3 drives on Linux servers, and it's rocket fast, solid and stable.

 

PNY, Samsung, and Western Digital all sell USB3 SSD external drives, though the prices leap up past 250GB capacity.

 

My most frequent problem with such drives is Windows 10 x64 too often failing to recognize the USB3 drives when they're connected or at boot time, something Microsoft has not properly fixed. The same drives mount okay via USB2 ports, but that's not a solution for this very common problem, one I've observed on multiple computers. Mac OS X, Ubuntu Linux, even older versions of Windows always mount the USB3 drives that I use via USB3 ports. Not so with Windows 10.

 

Let me reemphasize some points I wrote beyond the USB speed aspect.

 

 

"There are many facets going with an external HDD. The biggest would be the speed at which the HDD is accessed via USB. The second being USB being used like an internal HDD may not function 100% like you think it will. The USB connection CAN and will fail mid read or write and also the drive letter may change from one drive letter to the next thereby messing up the paths you have set for scenery and what have you in X-Plane."

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Let me reemphasize some points I wrote beyond the USB speed aspect.

 

 

"The USB connection CAN and will fail mid read or write and also the drive letter may change from one drive letter to the next thereby messing up the paths you have set for scenery and what have you in X-Plane."

 

In my experience, USB 3 drives, especially good quality ones that support UASP, rarely, if ever, have those problems. Reads and writes can fail on internal drives too. To avoid drive letter problems, assign the drive a letter towards the end of the alphabet and Windows will do a good job of remembering it. An external drive isn't as ideal as an internal one, but they are no where near as failure prone or troublesome as you make them out to be.

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I'd frown against going with an external hard drive. There are many facets going with an external HDD. The biggest would be the speed at which the HDD is accessed via USB. The second being USB being used like an internal HDD may not function 100% like you think it will. The USB connection can and will fail mid read or write and also the drive letter may change from one drive letter to the next thereby messing up the paths you have set for scenery and what have you in X-Plane.

 

You are better off buying an internal HDD. And you can pick up a massive internal platter-based HDD cheap compared to an SSD of the same size. I highly recommend an enterprise grade Hitachi. You can get a 2 TB for around $50, which would practically be the same cost as an external.

 

Here's one that might suit the bill. https://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-HUA723020ALA641-Ultrastar-7200RPM-Enterprise/dp/B00HRLI2FU/ref=sr_1_52?ie=UTF8&qid=1546555442&sr=8-52&keywords=HGST

 

Keep in mind that an enterprise HDD isn't going to be necessarily quite. It may in fact be loud. But you get about 2 million hours mean time before failure.

 

I have been using a VANTEC HX4 enclosure with 4 hard drives in it for years hooked up USB 3.0 at 5Gb's and it has never failed me or failed to read. I have tons of games and addons for flightsim on it and it always works wonderfully. Just as fast as an internal drive. Your advice was in error. Also, my drive letters never change.

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Hi everyone.

I think there are many valid points being made in these posts. What I would like to see is Your Personal experience, other bench marks would be very difficult to analyze due to many variable. Here is what I have, SSD internal close to 6000 MB / sec. read throughput, which is what XP desires / needs to load that huge scenery. My test with the 3.0 Turbo, 5TB Seagate USB, 131MB/ Sec., this drive is a couple of years old there may be some faster ones presently.

I would like to see anything external that comes close to the SSD in the pic. in a Read mode.

I think you need to keep things in perspective, you, one, may be OK with some performance, which is totally unacceptable to others. but when it comes to speed you never have enough and there in NO WAY that you can come close to the internal transfer...

 

 

image006.jpgimage012.jpg

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Hi: I am rapidly running out of space on my internal SSD that I have been using for XP11...Can anyone recommend an external SSD that would be fast enough (and large enough!) for XP11? Thanks a lot!

 

Give the Samsung T5 USB drives a look.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11719/samsung-portable-ssd-t5-review-64layer-vnand-debuts-in-retail

https://www.storagereview.com/samsung_portable_ssd_t5_review

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Hi.

OK, I will not try to convince some people about the speed / throughput / access time / transfer rate whatever you want to call it.

Here are the facts, the theoretical max xfer rate of USB 3.0 is 625 MB/Sec, which I've never seen in real life / system, I am not sure how you are ever going to get close to 6000MB/sec.

No contest, there is no external, including 3.2 USB-C, that can come close to internal performance.

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Hi.

OK, I will not try to convince some people about the speed / throughput / access time / transfer rate whatever you want to call it.

Here are the facts, the theoretical max xfer rate of USB 3.0 is 625 MB/Sec, which I've never seen in real life / system, I am not sure how you are ever going to get close to 6000MB/sec.

No contest, there is no external, including 3.2 USB-C, that can come close to internal performance.

 

This thread was started by someone looking for recommendations for an external SSD to use, so let's try to help them out. No one has ever claimed that external drives will match the fastest internal drives, so no need to convince anyone of anything. If you want to continue that debate, please start a new thread.

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Hi.

>>..Can anyone recommend an external SSD that would be fast enough (and large enough!) for XP11?

The question was to work with XP?

I think that it's important for people that are familiar with XP and system performance to respond in a practical way, give hands on experience. The OP I am sure looked at articles and benchmarks without us having to point to him.

I respondent to the OP in my first post. XP wil Not work properly with any external devices. XP has issues even when you use internal SSD, that is the point, telling people that some articles that show information about some bench marks are of no practical help.

If you can, get an internal, or you will have to live with stutters and slow performance.

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Seeing as those Samsung external drives have similar performance to internal SATA SSDs, I still don't see a major problem. Unless you're trying to say that all X-Plane 11 users are running off internal NVMe SSDs and no one anywhere is using an internal SATA model. Looking around there are people using external drives for X-Plane, even just for scenery, and it's working for them.
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