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Scratch drives--still important for Photoshop?

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XB70 Valkyrie

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Hi, I'm going to buy a new computer next week (HP with Intel Quad Core, 4 Gb RAM, NVIDIA 512 Mb graphics, 640 Gb hard drive, etc.) I would consider getting Vista 64 bit, but I'm trying to keep this to around $1000. In any case, I'm wondering whether it would be worth the money to install another internal hard drive as a scratch drive for Photoshop (I am still using CS2.) I have external drives, and would like to add a small RAID array in a few months, so storage is not really an issue. My question is, with the advent of multiple core processors, is a scratch drive still as important as it once was for PS? I do have some extremely large files (16 bpc, 6400 dpi Kodachrome scans weighing in at over 300 Mb each!). Given that I really don't need the disk space, would the addition of a second internal drive a priority for me right now?

Thanks for your comments.
 
XB70 Valkyrie said:
My question is, with the advent of multiple core processors, is a scratch drive still as important as it once was for PS?
Click to expand...
Scratch files are essentially about virtual memory space, not processor speed. You don't want your fast processor to be waiting for slow scratch files, so a dedicated scratch drive is a good idea even/especially for a fast processor.

Maybe scratch files/drives won't be such a big issue when we are running 64-bit OSes with 64-bit apps and our machines have at least 16.Gigs RAM, but it has nothing to do with processor speed.

--
 
Thanks guys. Do you have any suggestions as to the specs I should look for in an additional drive? I assume 250 to 320 Gb will suffice, provided I leave ample space devoted to PS.
 
Price difference between a 250 and a 500gb drive is minimal these days.

500gb would likely be faster too as there is more crammed into the same space, less travel for the head.... something like that.

If you partition a 500gb drive, put 100gb towards scratch disc and use the remaining for data archive, stuff you won't access that often.
 
Not only will a separate drive for PS scratch help, a separate drive for the page file helps as well. The name of the game is separating the IO load so that your not waiting for hard drive seeks and buffer transfers. Also, striping a pare of small drives makes for a great PS scratch volume.

This is my setup:
C: WD raptor 76-GB 10,000 RPM SATA
D: Seagate 500-GB 7,200 RPM SATA
E: 2 Seagate 80-GB 7,200 RPM SATA software striped by windows.

When I added the E: drives, working on huge files as you described became bearable.

Morris

--



http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~morris/POD
 
The 16Gb SSD drive are becoming pretty cheap now. Would that be a good idea to use as a scratch drive and maybe also for the swap file? I was thinking that the access time for these drives might speed things up. Any input on this?

Ludvig
 
I'm going to upgrade my scratch disk to a 120gb SSD when PS CS4 comes out. Still a bit pricey per gb but sod it - It's worth a go.

For the OP - get vista 64bit - there's no price difference and you'll be future proof. 32 bit will be gone in 2 years as RAM requirement/availablity have already and will continue to surpass the 4GB barrier ( obviously 32 bit O/S cannot deal with anything below 4gb and 32bit software is mostly limited to 2gb ).
 
Current generation flash based SSD's have enough trouble keeping up 5400rpm notebook drives. Their only speed advantage is random seeks, which should not be an issue with scratch drives.

Technology ios obviously moving in the direction of much better performing SSD technology, but as of the moment, nothing off the shelf seems worth the money for desktop computer performance. DDR based SSDs are another matter, but they are far more rare.
 
Member said:
Not only will a separate drive for PS scratch help, a separate drive for the page file helps as well.
Click to expand...
Please provide me with supportive links for this, other than Adobe's drivel on the topic that was originally written for Windows 3.11.

Jamming more HDs in a computer does not improve performance under the mythical presumption that scratch files have their own drives. The only performance increase is because empty HD's have faster write access due to angular speed of the empty portions of the drive filling up. If HD's are kept defragged, and under 50% capacity, read/write access impairment is negligible when compared to an empty drive.

Obviously putting a scratch disk on a 15k drive, or RAID 0 stripe is going to improve performance because these configurations change the physical access bottlencks of data of data. However, all things being otherwise equal, a bunch of 7200rpm drives are going to provide the same access to a scratch disk no matter where you put it, provided the drives aren't that filled up.
 
Scott,

I took Adobe’s advice and it works wonders. It also makes sense as you don’t wind up with the system waiting while the heads bounce back and fourth between page file, scratch file, dll files.

Try it your self. Try stitching an image with about 20 individual frames and then working on it. The improvements are night and day.

Morris

--



http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~morris/POD
 
Actually, I checked again, and the system I'm getting is Vista 64 bit (Vista Home Premium). I just hope I can get drivers for my four-year old peripherals (HP Laserjet and Epson flatbed scanner)!

I also use Illustrator 10. Do any of you know whether that will be compatible with 64 bit?

So, am I correct in understanding that the speed of the drive is not really much of a factor for a scratch drive?

Thanks again,
Kevin
 
I too took Adobe's advice and have a second hard drive for PS scratch disc on my home and work machines and it makes a big difference.
morris said:
Scott,

I took Adobe’s advice and it works wonders. It also makes sense as
you don’t wind up with the system waiting while the heads bounce back
and fourth between page file, scratch file, dll files.

Try it your self. Try stitching an image with about 20 individual
frames and then working on it. The improvements are night and day.

Morris

--



http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~morris/POD
Click to expand...
 
morris, how are you using these drives?

eg
c: PS app
d: PS scratch
e: OS page file

?
morris said:
This is my setup:
C: WD raptor 76-GB 10,000 RPM SATA
D: Seagate 500-GB 7,200 RPM SATA
E: 2 Seagate 80-GB 7,200 RPM SATA software striped by windows.
Click to expand...
--
pardon my typos :)
 
OOPS. I should have listed that :-}

This is my setup:
C: WD raptor 76-GB 10,000 RPM SATA - OS & Aps
D: Seagate 500-GB 7,200 RPM SATA - Page file & Storage
E: 2 Seagate 80-GB 7,200 RPM SATA software striped by windows. - PS Scratch

Morris
--



http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~morris/POD
 
You're claim is behind the times. Sure, there are plenty of SSDs on the market that will perfrom slowly as you mentioned, but there are MANY newer ones out there that beat ANY mechanical drive -- even the 10,000 rpm Raptors. Trouble is most of those are still very expensive. However Samsung (also packaged as OCZ, G-Skill) have some particular new drives that are somewhat reasonable and also very good performers.

Having a good SSD as the OS & Programs drive really adds punch to a system.
Scott Eaton said:
Current generation flash based SSD's have enough trouble keeping up
5400rpm notebook drives. Their only speed advantage is random seeks,
which should not be an issue with scratch drives.
Click to expand...
 
This is a very interesting question. Adobe uses scratch drives as a virtual storage, but did so because of memory limitations. When I run PS CS3 on my 8GB Vista 64 machine, other than the initial access to the disk drive when the image is loaded I detect almost no disk activity until the images is saved. I am using 5D images which are about 50 MB per layer, and even in files with 5 or 6 layers (300 MB or so) I detect no access until save.

--
jerryk.smugmug.com
 
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