Scratch drives--still important for Photoshop?

Really? I wish that happens to mine

On my 8gb vista x64 system the scratch disk is accessed as soon as I start work on my images. I predominantly use ps for digital drawing and as soon as my stylus touches the tablet the hard drives are chugging - The files are big ( 250mb to 2.6gb ) so that is a factor, but, even on my 250mb images the scratch is being used despite free ram. I read somewhere that is is how cs3 works ( can remember where though )

"
Windows has a lot of apps and the OS also pages. That is why I do:
C: OS & Apps
D: Page and files
E: PS Scratch

Morris "

I have on my new computer (Vista 64-bit) 3 SATA-drives (each 500 Gb). I'm going to follow Morris's layout (thaks to you) but I like to partition those drives like that:
Physical drive 1 C: 500 Gb OS and Apps
Physical drive 2 E: 50 Gb Win Page file and second partition F: 450 Gb data
Physical drive 3 G: 50 Gb Photoshop Scratch and second partition H: 450 Gb data

Would it have any disadvantages if I partition drives 2 and 3 so or would it be better to do no partition at all. If I do those partitions there would be clean base to page file and scratch all the time - altought there will be much data on partitions F: and H:.

MikkoR

Agree

See Intel X25-M reviews. Fastest drive ever tested.

Martin said:

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...

Click to expand...

Its hard to let old legends go.

Scott Eaton said:

Scott Eaton 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.
--

Click to expand...

I'm looking at SSD too (Intel SSD BTW), but for OS and APS. My understanding is that SSD has a limited number of writes per bit ( 100k). Using it for scratch may not be the best thing to do. Maybe a fast, 15K SAS drive or two would be best.
--
Ken

Hi

The poster talked about going for 64bit vista, so why not just buy 16GB or RAM instead of expensive solid state disk. You could have even 32GB on some hardware. Faster than any drive and speeds up other apps too.

Imagine if the whole processing data would fit into RAN never go to any disk...

I made measurements with robocopy, copying large files between and inside partitions and found a measurable difference in performance. Clearly the fastest place for the files was in the beginning of the drive.

It's a good idea to configure them as you described.

Other data on the drive doesn't matter at all if it's not heavily used at the same time with photoshop use.

Many posters have said that even with lots of RAM Photoshop still uses or even requires the scratch area.

Yes, RAM is more important though.

kjuh said:

Hi

The poster talked about going for 64bit vista, so why not just buy
16GB or RAM instead of expensive solid state disk. You could have
even 32GB on some hardware. Faster than any drive and speeds up other
apps too.

Imagine if the whole processing data would fit into RAN never go to
any disk...

Click to expand...

Read some of the reviews of recent SSDs, especially the Intel X25-M. Wear leveling algorithyms have pretty much eliminated the write-wear issue for most users. The expected life span is longer than with regular drives.

Ken Fife said:

I'm looking at SSD too (Intel SSD BTW), but for OS and APS. My
understanding is that SSD has a limited number of writes per bit
( 100k). Using it for scratch may not be the best thing to do.
Maybe a fast, 15K SAS drive or two would be best.
--
Ken

Click to expand...

--
jfs

Nikon D40X & D90 user

Obviously you haven't read about the Intel X25-M or MemoRights, or MTRONs.

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.

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.
--

Click to expand...

I’m looking at either one 32GB Intel X25-E or two 15K RPM SAS HDDs for Photoshop scratch and OS page files. MB will have 12GB RAM and I may be using the 80GB or 160GB X25-M for OS and APS.

Questions:

1. Will one X25-E handle both Photoshop and OS? I think it should given it’s performance.

2. Should I raid the two HDDs or keep them separate (one dedicated to OS page and the other dedicated to Photoshop scratch)?

3. Assuming I go with the 2 Raid SAS drives, what raid level provides the best performance?
--
Ken

Ken:

If you get the 80GB X-25M, I think you would easily cover loading everything and have great performance and some additional room. With mechanical HDDs I always keep the amount of space used on the OS/Apps drive to a minimum, like 10%, because the outer area of the disk is fastest and you can optimize the disk to place the data/apps there. With SSDs, those worries and fragmentation problems should be over. The disk should be just as fast with 20 or 70 GB on it.

I don't think I would raid the two SSDs yet, but you could, they are reported to emulate a mechanical drive very closely. I would wait to hear a little more about the pros and cons of this. Since it is not a mechanical device and the drives can't actually interleave data, the drive would actually be simulating interleaved reads and writes. And what about block sizes? You might just be wearing out the drives twice as quick, but I am guessing. With SSDs reported reliability, RAID 0 will be the only RAID I would ever use.

I have never run the page file on its own disk, but that would be a good idea. A SSD drive for the page file would be awesome, since it needs fast access and fragments quickly on a regular HDD but wouldnt on a SSD.

With a Nehalem system, I would probably try running it without a page file if you have a SSD. Since the Nehalem has extremely fast 3 channel interleaved memory on CPU control rather than Northbridge, it needs data faster than a page file can ever deliver. If it did still need a page file, I would want it served off a SSD.

Im rambling, you probably know more than most people on here about SSDs at this point anyway.

Im waiting a week max. to see if the price comes down below $600 on the X-25M80. Then Im buying one for "testing". Im only using 10.9GB of my Velociraptor for the OS/Apps drive, so it is plenty big for me.

Ken Fife said:

I’m looking at either one 32GB Intel X25-E or two 15K RPM SAS HDDs
for Photoshop scratch and OS page files. MB will have 12GB RAM and I
may be using the 80GB or 160GB X25-M for OS and APS.

Questions:

1. Will one X25-E handle both Photoshop and OS? I think it should
given it’s performance.

2. Should I raid the two HDDs or keep them separate (one dedicated
to OS page and the other dedicated to Photoshop scratch)?

3. Assuming I go with the 2 Raid SAS drives, what raid level
provides the best performance?
--
Ken

Click to expand...

"and under 50% capacity,"

That's funny.