Dedicated Scratch Disk?

JL
Posted By
Jonathan_Lewis
May 26, 2004
Views
296
Replies
5
Status
Closed
I’ve been getting some error messages recently in PS7 saying that I don’t have enough scratch disk space to complete an operation. So, I set up a second scratch disk. That took care of the errors in PS, but then I started getting "insufficient memory" errors in other programs (QuarkXpress and MS Outlook).

I’m considering adding another hard drive to my computer and setting it up as a dedicated scratch disk. I was wondering if anyone has any specific recommendations for how large of a drive I should get (20GB? More?). In PS I generally work with images from 20-80MB (now and then as high as 100MB, but not often).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Jonathan
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DP
Daryl_Pritchard
May 26, 2004
Hi Jonathan,

I don’t know why a PS scratch disk would affect QuarkXpress or MS Outlook, but at least in answer to your 2nd question about a hard drive, I’d say just get whatever size you think might be useful to you. A 20GB drive is far more than adequate for use as a PS scratch disk and in fact you probably wouldn’t need to allocate more than 2-4GB of that for PS use, using the remainder for data storage or whatever other purposes might fit your need. I vaguely recall seeing mention of a max usable scratch disk size for PS but I forget what that was.

Regards,

Daryl
MM
Mac_McDougald
May 26, 2004
They still make 20GB HDs?

Mac
JL
Jonathan_Lewis
May 26, 2004
Maybe they don’t make 20GB HDs anymore. I thought they did, but maybe not. Perhaps I’ll just get a 40 or 60GB and have some extra storage space. Now if I can only persuade the "powers that be" that an extra hard drive is necessary . . .
SM
Snapper_McGauhey
May 26, 2004
120 GB drives with 8 MB buffers now are in the $100 price range. Visit a PC Club in a city near you. I have 7 hard drives with the help of a Promise RAID card. Cache space is never a problem and I direct Photoshop’s 4 cache locations (in preferences) to drives D:, F:, J: and L:…leaving my C:drive only for my programs, basically. It all runs faster that way. Also I tested my drive access speeds with SiSoft Sandra 2004 Pro and the order I selected my 4 caches was based on drive read/write speed.

Backing up essential data is a cinch with 1.4 TB of storage space.

I also have 2 backup h.d.d.’s that I keep off line, to evade the occassional malware, virus or worm devastation.

In this day and age of very cheap, very large hard drives it only makes sense to have more than one. I just can’t feel safe unless my most important data is on at least 3 drives…most safe of course if I already have it backed up on CD or DVD Roms.

….just my two cents worth.

🙂
JL
Jonathan_Lewis
May 26, 2004
I actually do have a 60GB mirrored Raid array, and my operating system on a separate 20GB hard drive. However, my computer also acts as the server for our network, so it’s got more than just my own work to handle. I’d like to get a removable hard drive for back ups, and more storage space as well.

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