Photoshop and scratch disks...

[Zucarita9000]

I want to get a dedicated hard drive to use as scratch disk for Photoshop, AfterEffects and all the Adobe apps that requiere them.

I'm getting an 80GB/8MB 7k SATA drive, and after reading a lot about Photoshop and Memory management, I still have a few questions:

1. Should I use only one volume for this drive (one 74.5GB partition)?
I read that Photoshop can only address 2GB per scratch volume, so..

2. Would it be better to partition the drive in several smaller volumes and configure Photoshop to use all four scratch volumes?

PS allow up to four scratch disks, so having a dedicated hard drive with four volumes would make sense... wouldn't it?

I'm also getting 2GB of RAM in a month or so. I want a PS monster!

Oh, btw, it's the CS version I'm talking about.

 

[Zugzwang152]

i don't see why you'd bother partitioning. even if it has 4 different volumes to use as scratch, the drive can only spin so fast anyway. Are you planning on using all those apps at once or something?

 

[Zucarita9000]

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152
i don't see why you'd bother partitioning. even if it has 4 different volumes to use as scratch, the drive can only spin so fast anyway. Are you planning on using all those apps at once or something?

Nah.. I mostly run Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, Dreamweaver MX, several IEs, Firefox and Outlook at the same time. Web design takes a lot of different apps.

 

[gsaldivar]

Ideally, 4 x 2GB partitions residing on separate "fast" hard disks and separate buses works best.

If you choose to use a single dedicated volume instead, then 4 x 2GB partitions solely dedicated to PS will work fine. You will want to create these partitions on the fastest hard disk you have. The partitions should be the first ones on the hard disk, where access/rotational speeds are the fastest. Should you choose to create a 5th partition with the remainder of the space on the hard disk you plan to use, you should use it to store data which will have the LEAST chance of being accessed while you are using PS. The reason for this is to avoid "competing" with PS for access to the scratch disk volumes during file manipulation, when PS makes extremely heavy use of those scratch disk partitions. So, don't use the 5th partition on your "scratch" hard disk to store Windows, or your PS work files.

Make sure you leave the 4 scratch disk volumes completely empty. After you define the 4 scratch volumes in PS preferences, PS will automatically populate those volumes with scratch data while you are manipulating large files.

Regarding your RAM config: PS also has a 2GB RAM address limit. Your choice to build a system with 2GB of RAM is less than optimum because Windows and other tasks will occupy a portion of the 2GB RAM installed in the system, leaving the remaining ~1-1.75GB for PS to use. An ideal system configuration should have a minimum of 3GB of high speed RAM, allowing PS to full make use of its 2GB allocation limit, while still leaving 1GB for Windows and background tasks. If you plan to multitask heavily while using PS, seriously consider increasing your system RAM to 3-4GB+.

If you have further questions regarding optimizing hardware for commercial PS use - feel free to give me a PM.

Good luck!

 

[Zucarita9000]

Originally posted by: gsaldivar
Ideally, 4 x 2GB partitions residing on separate "fast" hard disks and separate buses works best.

The hard disk will be running on a Promise SATA378 FastTrak2 controller and will be used solely for scratch & overflow data.

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: gsaldivar
Ideally, 4 x 2GB partitions residing on separate "fast" hard disks and separate buses works best.

If you choose to use a single dedicated volume instead, then 4 x 2GB partitions solely dedicated to PS will work fine. You will want to create these partitions on the fastest hard disk you have. The partitions should be the first ones on the hard disk, where access/rotational speeds are the fastest. Should you choose to create a 5th partition with the remainder of the space on the hard disk you plan to use, you should use it to store data which will have the LEAST chance of being accessed while you are using PS. The reason for this is to avoid "competing" with PS for access to the scratch disk volumes during file manipulation, when PS makes extremely heavy use of those scratch disk partitions. So, don't use the 5th partition on your "scratch" hard disk to store Windows, or your PS work files.

Make sure you leave the 4 scratch disk volumes completely empty. After you define the 4 scratch volumes in PS preferences, PS will automatically populate those volumes with scratch data while you are manipulating large files.

Regarding your RAM config: PS also has a 2GB RAM address limit. Your choice to build a system with 2GB of RAM is less than optimum because Windows and other tasks will occupy a portion of the 2GB RAM installed in the system, leaving the remaining ~1-1.75GB for PS to use. An ideal system configuration should have a minimum of 3GB of high speed RAM, allowing PS to full make use of its 2GB allocation limit, while still leaving 1GB for Windows and background tasks. If you plan to multitask heavily while using PS, seriously consider increasing your system RAM to 3-4GB+.

If you have further questions regarding optimizing hardware for commercial PS use - feel free to give me a PM.

Good luck!

I was about to type all of this - sure glad he did

 

[Zucarita9000]

I posted the same message in the Adobe Forums, and this is what I got:

You read incorrect information.

Photoshop CS supports up to 64 exabytes (EB) of scratch disk space on a
total of four volumes. Photoshop 7.x supports up to 4 EB. (An EB is equal to
1 billion gigabytes.) It therefore follows that Photoshop CS can address up
to 8 exabytes per scratch drive.

See http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/318243.html for details on
Photoshop Optimization

It would be more sensible
to create a dedicated scratch partition of maybe 5 to 10 gigs and assign the
secondary scratch to another drive. Unless you are working with really huge
files it is unlikely the secondary will ever be used, anyway.

Ok, so creating a 12GB partition in the fastest portion of the drive (outer rim) for Photoshop and leave the rest for other things would be the best thing. I can always create more partitions later.

 

[Zucarita9000]

Sorry to bump an old post, but I just wanted to share my experiences.
I installed the third hard drive and created a 12GB partition at the beginning of the drive and configured Photoshop to use that as the primary scratch volume.

I cannot believe how much difference it made. Not only Photoshop is faster, the entire system is more responsive during long editing sessions. No longer I have to close and re-open PS after a few hours. I've opened a few 80MB psd files and even as the scratch was getting bigger, I didn't noticed any performance hit.

So, if you do a lot of PS work, consider getting a dedicated hdd for it.