Computer Graphics with Photoshop - Another scratch disk question

Author

Another scratch disk question

Brian

2004-10-07, 7:14 pm

Currently I have two 80-gig drives, RAID 0/striped. This volume is split
evenly to form my C and D drives. XP's scratch disk is on D, and PS's
scratch disk is also on D (yes I know this is a no-no). I'm in the
process of reconfiguring my system, and am wondering if it's worth it to
buy a used 7200rpm IDE drive and dedicate it as a PS scratch disk. Would
I see a noticable performance increase?

The system as it sits now is a P4 2.4ghz, 512 megs RAM. I screwed myself
when I bought the computer by letting the salesman talk me into RAMBUS
(so shoot me), so when I do end up adding RAM I'm going to have to fork
out the $$ for a new mobo and go the DDR route anyway.

Note that even when I do upgrade to a gig (or more?) of RAM, I'll still
buy the new drive to use as a scratch disk. I guess in the end I'm just
wondering how noticable the performance gain will be with a dedicated
scratch disk (assuming I don't add RAM at this time).

I'm learning this as I go, so bear with me and thanks in advance.

-Brian

Hecate

2004-10-07, 11:14 pm

On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 21:28:00 -0000, Brian <not@here.com> wrote:

>Currently I have two 80-gig drives, RAID 0/striped. This volume is split
>evenly to form my C and D drives. XP's scratch disk is on D, and PS's
>scratch disk is also on D (yes I know this is a no-no). I'm in the
>process of reconfiguring my system, and am wondering if it's worth it to
>buy a used 7200rpm IDE drive and dedicate it as a PS scratch disk. Would
>I see a noticable performance increase?

It's a total waste of time to have the PS scratch disk on a partition
- it wouldn't matter if the XP scratch was on C and the PS one on D,
because you've striped them they appear as the same physical disk and
both disks will be accessed at the same time.

So, yes, it is worth having a separate disk. I have a separate disk
which is used for saving images and as the PS scratch disk and it made
things quite a bit faster.

--

Hecate - The Real One
Hecate@newsguy.com
veni, vidi, reliqui

jjs

2004-10-07, 11:14 pm

"Hecate" <hecate@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:v8nbm0hdv02f2lal2f5v00ld5369ifij4d@4ax.com...

> It's a total waste of time to have the PS scratch disk on a partition
> - it wouldn't matter if the XP scratch was on C and the PS one on D,
> because you've striped them they appear as the same physical disk and
> both disks will be accessed at the same time.

PS/CS users should tatoo that on their bodies. PS/CS is a state-of-the-art
image processing program that performs well enough with the defaults, BUT if
you want awesome performace, do what the pros do and install four spindles
dedicated to PS/CS sources and scrath files and be happy. Really, the price
of discs is trivial when one considers the scope of PS/CS.

Hecate

2004-10-08, 11:14 pm

On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 19:57:00 -0500, "jjs" <jjs@nospam.com> wrote:

>"Hecate" <hecate@newsguy.com> wrote in message
>news:v8nbm0hdv02f2lal2f5v00ld5369ifij4d@4ax.com...
>
>
>PS/CS users should tatoo that on their bodies. PS/CS is a state-of-the-art
>image processing program that performs well enough with the defaults, BUT if
>you want awesome performace, do what the pros do and install four spindles
>dedicated to PS/CS sources and scrath files and be happy. Really, the price
>of discs is trivial when one considers the scope of PS/CS.
>
Yes. Disks are almost consumables now :)

--

Hecate - The Real One
Hecate@newsguy.com
veni, vidi, reliqui

Hecate

2004-10-12, 4:14 am