Page and Cache Configurations

[Jeff Folkins]

Looking for advice for the best speed performance location for my XP page and Nikon NX2 or Photoshop Cache Files

I have the following Disks

1. 1 (XP OS, Data Fiiles)
2. 2 (Applications) - including small partition partition
3. 3 (long term storage) - including small extra partition

So should I provide page file space on all three disks in extra partitions and the NX2 or Photoshop Cache Files on #3's extra partition?

Would it be faster to temporarily put the data files on #3 when I am working on them

Thanks for any help
Jeff at http://folkins.net

p.s. disk #2 is a faster raptor 36G disk

 

[Nadrek]

Well, depends on what you're trying to optimize.

The Windows page file/ nix (OSX) swap partition can be optimized by buying enough RAM (4GB) and removing it completely, relying solely on physical RAM.

Ideally, on any standard hard drive, you want to minimize head movements. This means you want each physical drive to operate in the same area as continuously as possible. This would imply that you should:
A) Defrag all drives (regularly)
B) Not have the photo files you're working with on your OS drive
C) Not have your Photoshop cache on your photo file drive

For instance, last night I watched Adobe Camera Raw with the Sysinternals process monitor ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cb56073f-62a3-4ed8-9dd6-40c84cb9e2f5.aspx ).

When "updating settings" on a couple hundred files, for each file, it did work on my entire 22GB RAW file, did some work in the Camera Raw cache, then did more work on my entire 22MB RAW file. The RAW file work dwarfed the cache work, and watching Task Manager, about half the time my CPU (AMD Athlon X2 5600+ dual core 2.8Ghz).

Based on that, if you work with large files, putting them on your Raptor, and having nothing else using your Raptor, would help.

Turning off other programs may help.

Making sure antivirus does not target JPG or DNG or TIF whatever other raw format extensions you use may help.

Benchmark different configurations.

If you use an SSD, of course, then you can share different parts on the same disk, since they don't have heads to seek with - I'm considering an Intel X25-E to share my caches and my working files on.

--
http://www.pbase.com/nadrek
Equipment list in profile

 

[Jeff Folkins]

I am trying to optimize the performance of photoshop or NX in manipulating files and especially with saving them.

The Windows page file/ nix (OSX) swap partition can be optimized by
buying enough RAM (4GB) and removing it completely, relying solely on
physical RAM.

I do in fact have 4GB. Does that mean that allocation of the swap files isn't important? Did you mean that I should actually remove the page swap files or will the I get the best performance automatically?

A) Defrag all drives (regularly)

good point, I don't do this often enough.

Sysinternals process monitor ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cb56073f-62a3-4ed8-9dd6-40c84cb9e2f5.aspx ).

I didn't know about "process monitor". I will download it this evening and play with it. Thanks for the link.

Based on that, if you work with large files, putting them on your
Raptor, and having nothing else using your Raptor, would help.
Benchmark different configurations.

Yes, I will try doing some benchmarking. I will try putting my data files (even if temporarily) on one of the other disks and see if that speeds things up. I feel foolish that I didn't actually think about trying to solve this probem empricially by switching things around and seeing what works best.

Turning off other programs may help.

Since I have plenty of RAM does it really matter if there are other programs running as long as they aren't doing much (e.g. internet explorer and Outlook).

Making sure antivirus does not target JPG or DNG or TIF whatever
other raw format extensions you use may help.

never thought of that. I will check. thanks

Thanks a million Nadrek
--
Jeff at http://folkins.net

 

[Nadrek]

Well, if you're trying to optimize.

If you're running 32-bit Windows XP, you can try the 3GB switch - be warned it may do Bad Things to your system.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791558.aspx

The old Nikon View did have its own cache - that, too, should be moved around.

With 4GB of RAM, I would absolutely turn off the page file entirely. Allowing Windows the chance to do disk reads and writes when you don't want it to is silly.

As for whether turning off other programs will help, running Process Monitor will show you that - if you see other programs doing disk reads and writes on any drive that Photoshop/NX is doing reads and writes, then yes, it's affecting your speed. It may or may not be noticable, but it is almost certainly going to affect speed, because the drive head will be out of place.

Benchmarking is one of the most useful and least used means of performance improvement. It is the only actual way to tell if things are better, but it is dry, tedious, boring, and takes forever doing exactly the same thing over and over and over. It's not sexy or fun, like pontificating about why something should make things faster can be. It is, however, the only real way to tell if things are better, and by how much, and which change mattered, and which was bad.

Good luck, If you have a budget, work on striped (RAID 0) sets of Intel X25-E or Acard ANS-9010's.

--
http://www.pbase.com/nadrek
Equipment list in profile

 

[morris]

What you need to do is separate the IO work load. It looks like you did this some as your setup is:

1. 1 (XP OS, Data Files)
2. 2 (Applications) - including small partition
3. 3 (long term storage) - including small extra partition

Why did you mix data on your OS drive? Applications and OS are all code, I like to put them together. This is the setup I recommend:

1 OS and Applications
2 Scratch Drive

3 Swap partition on beginning of data drive. Make the partition 4 x you RAM and fill the partition with a fixed size swap file.

I agree with the previous poster that Photoshop uses the scratch drive more than the paging file. The important thing to remember is that your system will stall when it runs out of RAM so you want to make the swapper work quickly.

Morris

--



http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~morris/POD

 

[Jeff Folkins]

If you're running 32-bit Windows XP, you can try the 3GB switch - be
warned it may do Bad Things to your system.

Looks dangerous if I don't know what I am doing. I will read up on it. thanks again for the reference.

With 4GB of RAM, I would absolutely turn off the page file entirely.

I will experiment with this.

Allowing Windows the chance to do disk reads and writes when you
don't want it to is silly.

Thanks.. this sort of explains the problem to me, i.e. that having some other application use the same disk puts the head in the wrong place and slows down the writes.

As for whether turning off other programs will help, running Process
Monitor will show you that - if you see other programs doing disk
reads and writes

I have downloaded MS process monitor and will play with it.

Benchmarking ........, but it is dry, tedious, boring, and takes forever doing
exactly the same thing over and over and over. It's not sexy or fun,

yeah... I found that out this evening. I did an experiment where I put data files on two different disks: the original OS and the Raptor application disk and then did saves over and over again till I got a good feel for the difference.

The bad news is it was boring.

The really good news is that simply moving my data files to a different disk has sped up my bottleneck problem (file saves) by about 50%. I am thrilled. Thanks for your help.

--
Jeff at http://folkins.net

 

[Jeff Folkins]

Why did you mix data on your OS drive?

In retrospect it was a mistake. I wish I had known this when I origiinally set it up. But now I am also stuck with the fact that I have already set my system this way and moving the OS and applications would take a massive amount of time to redo.

1 OS and Applications
2 Scratch Drive

The good news (as I wrote in the thread above this) is that I experimented with putting the data on the second drive (as you would have) and it has significantly sped up my file saves (either because it is a faster drive or because it isn't the OS drive, I don't know which is the bigger effect).

3 Swap partition on beginning of data drive. Make the partition 4 x
you RAM and fill the partition with a fixed size swap file.

That is at least one good thing I did when I set up the disks originally, I put nice partitions at the beginnings (and I am used fixed swap files)

Thanks for your help.

--
Jeff at http://folkins.net