New NVMe PCI-E SSD - Trainz or OS?

gisa

Routelayer Ordinaire...
Hi Everyone,


My system is starting to get older and in the need for more space and faster storage, I treated myself and went with with a 1 GB NVMe m.2 PCI-E x 4 SSD (link below)

https://www.newegg.ca/western-digital-blue-sn550-nvme-1tb/p/N82E16820250135

My question is: what to put on it to optimize TRS19? Three cases here:

1) Put only OS on it (Current OS is about 5 years old, using a Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD, Sata 6 Gb/s port - works fine)

2) Put both OS and Trainz on it. I'm thinking this is never the best idea but given this is supposed to be 3x faster than a typical SSD?

3) Put trainz on it (Currently on a 4 year old, Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB SSD drive)


I'm content with system speeds and both drives seem to be operating fine, despite their age. I was worried that they'd just die at about the 5 year mark, but I don't typically do a lot of write cycles to them. Can you believe I still have two 750 GB HDDs from 2012 that are still working fine? (Yes, I've made backups)

System stats: running Windows 10 64 GB, ASUS z170a mobo, Intel i5 6600k CPU (overclocked 25%), 16 GB 3000 DDR RAM, nVidia GTX 1060 6GB vid card

I'm not sure where, but the fine print on my mobo says the m.2 shares PCI data lanes? so I might not get the speeds I'm hoping for, but still expecting an improvement.

Thoughts?


Mr. Gisa
 
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There are various opinions, of course. I put the builds on the ssd, and left the system and trainz program on hard drive. The db repairs go MUCH faster. Part of my reasoning was to reduce writes to the ssd, but I cannot justify that with hard data, just a whim. I have never been a believer in windows on the ssd; I don't care if takes a little longer to boot up.
 
I'm not sure where, but the fine print on my mobo says the m.2 shares PCI data lanes? so I might not get the speeds I'm hoping for, but still expecting an improvement.



Yes, devices on the PCIe bus share what are called lanes. That includes your graphics card, SATA controller, and SSD. That's just the way it is. I would not spend time worrying about it, just make sure your MoBd has 16 lanes.
 
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I'd go trainz on the new drive as well but that's just a gut feel.

With win 10 it should warn you before a drive fails. S.M.A.R.T. technology, Samsung have tools to look at their enterprise SSDs but those are much more expensive. Currently SSD life is estimated at 10 years for the average user.

Spreading the traffic over a couple of drives is better than putting it all on one. Two reasons, the first is for physical hard drives head moment but the second also applies to SSD and that is the connection between the CPU and the drive. If you're lucky they'll end up on different channels.

Cheerio John
 
Thank you both for your replies. I think I'll just clone the current SSD that has trainz and put it on the new one. Should give me plenty of room for trainz and some other games I would like to put on there.

It should arrive tomorrow and I can't wait to see how it does (and to move some of my other games onto there too).

Have a great day!


Mr. Gisa
 
Mr. Gisa - Suggest clone your boot drive to your new, fast PCIe NVMe SSD instead, for the maximum performance boost possible for your current computing experience. And then copy over the program files for TRS19 to that and run it from there too.
Big believer in having your fastest (storage) hard drive as your boot drive, especially if it has sufficient capacity to run your OS and all of your program files/ applications with room to spare. (1 Tb should be ample for this).
Data can then be stored on additional SSDs or HDDs according to need.
I have TRS19 cohabiting with Windows 10 on my boot drive SSD C: and the Local Data Files (TRS19 UserData) on another (fast) SSD, D: Bulk data (like photos, video storage and other media) is maintained on another multi-terabyte drive, F:
Reliability, wear and endurance on modern PCIe SSDs is hardly a major consideration these days, as long as you buy reputable brands and quality drives and allocate sufficient free-space for over-provisioning during setup.
 
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Mr. Gisa - Suggest clone your boot drive to your new, fast PCIe NVMe SSD instead, for the maximum performance boost possible for your current computing experience. And then copy over the program files for TRS19 to that and run it from there too.
Big believer in having your fastest (storage) hard drive as your boot drive, especially if it has sufficient capacity to run your OS and all of your program files/ applications with room to spare. (1 Tb should be ample for this).
Data can then be stored on additional SSDs or HDDs according to need.
I have TRS19 cohabiting with Windows 10 on my boot drive SSD C: and the Local Data Files (TRS19 UserData) on another (fast) SSD, D: Bulk data (like photos, video storage and other media) is maintained on another multi-terabyte drive, F:
Reliability, wear and endurance on modern PCIe SSDs is hardly a major consideration these days, as long as you buy reputable brands and quality drives and allocate sufficient free-space for over-provisioning during setup.

This sounds like a good idea. I'm not too concerned about the quality (the brand I bought was Western Digital and I'm running HDDs from them that are over 8 years old without issues).

So the idea is I put my OS and the trainz (just the program itself) on the new SSD? I technically have 3 SSDs: would it make more sense to put the OS on one, trainz program on another, and trainz data on another? Or would the speed gains on the NVMe outweigh spreading them out?

Right now, I have trainz on the new NVMe SSD (program and data). Is there an easy way to separate the two? I don't want to reinstall trainz and I have a lot of data as well. Could you educate me on the easiest way to move the data files to another drive? (or a thread you recommend as a walk through?)

I appreciate your input: thank you kindly for your suggestions.


Mr. Gisa
 
Having TRS19 and your UserData on the same drive is optimal since you have adequate space to do this. And since the Operating System (in your case, Windows 10 64) not only also benefits most from being on your fastest drive for operational responsiveness, but also it lends that extra support and responsiveness performance to other Apps/ programs that reside on your boot disk.
My suggestion was to clone the current OS boot drive (i.e. your Samsung EVO 500Gb SATA drive) to the new PCIe NVMe drive to achieve a massive improvement in read and write processing at a base level for ALL programs - and then transfer any games that benefit from super-fast disk i/o and low latencies (like TRS19!) to that as well, as long as you have sufficient space to accommodate them. At a minimum, transfer the program files there and if need be, consider splitting off the datafiles to the Samsung EVO SSD if space + headroom doesn't allow on the 1Tb boot drive.
I always install my TRS19 builds into a dedicated folder on C: (For my Platinum Build, it is simply designated C:\TRS19). The local data folder (i.e. all of my UserData folders) has been established on my SSD D: drive at "D:\Userdata_Platinum", since I have other live installations of TRS19 and T:ANE concurrently installed on the same PC - and again, all in their own dedicated folders on various local drives.
Copy/ pasting is sufficient to transfer your existing installation to your new drive. It is only the OS boot drive partition and existing programs/ data that should be cloned if you were planning to shift your boot disk to your new, faster, PCIe drive.
You will be amazed at how much more responsive TRS19 becomes when it is moved to a really fast SSD - in particular file operations like database repairs and saving/ opening route and session edits. Allows for greater multitasking performance as well...
 
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I'd double check that you can boot from the new SSD first. Not all systems can use NVMes to boot.

Cheerio John
 
I needed a larger disc drive, so I bought a Large (conventional) disc drive, which came with a SSD (225GB). I put TS 2019 onto the SSD and it really has made the loading time (for the program and the routes) much less. Moving the OS seemed to be a challenge so I just chose the simple option...

When I load East coast main line, the loading completes before the loco arrives at the station...

Colin
 
I'd double check that you can boot from the new SSD first. Not all systems can use NVMes to boot.

Cheerio John

I had some (silly on my part) issues getting it going (forgot I had to use disk management to create partitions and stuff). I tried cloning the OS and it didn't work the first time. Made a recovery disk and tried the second time but it worked fine (without the need for the rescue disk). Definitely worth looking into before starting of course!

Then, I accidentally deleted the trainz folders I had backed up and the partition. Thankfully, I was able to recover the partition and am recovering the data now (looks like I have another hour to go lol).

In the end, it'll be worth it. :D


Mr. Gisa
 
Having TRS19 and your UserData on the same drive is optimal since you have adequate space to do this. And since the Operating System (in your case, Windows 10 64) not only also benefits most from being on your fastest drive for operational responsiveness, but also it lends that extra support and responsiveness performance to other Apps/ programs that reside on your boot disk.
My suggestion was to clone the current OS boot drive (i.e. your Samsung EVO 500Gb SATA drive) to the new PCIe NVMe drive to achieve a massive improvement in read and write processing at a base level for ALL programs - and then transfer any games that benefit from super-fast disk i/o and low latencies (like TRS19!) to that as well, as long as you have sufficient space to accommodate them. At a minimum, transfer the program files there and if need be, consider splitting off the datafiles to the Samsung EVO SSD if space + headroom doesn't allow on the 1Tb boot drive.
I always install my TRS19 builds into a dedicated folder on C: (For my Platinum Build, it is simply designated C:\TRS19). The local data folder (i.e. all of my UserData folders) has been established on my SSD D: drive at "D:\Userdata_Platinum", since I have other live installations of TRS19 and T:ANE concurrently installed on the same PC - and again, all in their own dedicated folders on various local drives.
Copy/ pasting is sufficient to transfer your existing installation to your new drive. It is only the OS boot drive partition and existing programs/ data that should be cloned if you were planning to shift your boot disk to your new, faster, PCIe drive.
You will be amazed at how much more responsive TRS19 becomes when it is moved to a really fast SSD - in particular file operations like database repairs and saving/ opening route and session edits. Allows for greater multitasking performance as well...


What you wrote definitely makes sense and I'm almost done. :) It'd be easier in my case to just have the OS, Trainz program, and the data, all on the same NVMe. Looking forward to seeing the performance gain later.

Mr. Gisa
 
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