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Part of the answer depends on your work flow. 160gb should be enough but 512mb will be sluggish at best.
Photoshop loads fiiles you open into ram which is pretty much the speed of light (well in a perfect world, but even in an imperfect it is fast fast fast in comparison) vs. the HD which is a turtle. If you open up a 100mb file and then add some layers and make some corrections you will soon have used all available ram (the history palette uses a lot). Also if you work like me and (lets say) open 10 files and perform a batch action on them you certainly will have used all the available ram so then the OS and photoshop will have to begin swapping HD space (virtual mem) in lieu of RAM.
Because of the sluggishness of HDs and the swapping in/out of file to/from HD/RAM…fuggedaboudit.
250gb might be overkill but then again HDs have a way of filling up fast.
Before you replace you ram do a few tests. Open a group of files and perform a batch of actions (rotate 1 degree, gaussian blue of 5, add layer, rotatate back 3 degrees–something like that). Time it. A clock will do, not need for a stopwatch here.
Then do the same tests after installing the new ram. You will feel quite satisfied with your investment.
I’m working on a straightforward job in which I need to open a file (approx 130mb), duplicate the layer, make the bottom layer a full grayscale in the k channel only and then sillo the image so only the shadow/background is K and the masked in layer is 4c.
On an iMac g5 with 512 ram I could do 3 or 4 an hour if I was lucky. After installing new ram for a total of 2 gigs I can now do 15 an hour.
I can also use VirtusTech’s "FluidMask". Previoiusly it was so slow I could easily draw a silo faster.
Actually if I were going to spend money on two 750s, I woudl then software mirror RAID them and offload to tape, but that is a personal choice that is good for my workflow.
For the 2nd HD, if I were to get a 250gb drive, would you recommend partitioning it and using part of it for a scratch disk and the other part for storage? Or is it better to leave the whole drive as a scratch disk?
Why are you thinking small with a 250Gig Get 2 750s make your scratch partition the first one make it 100 gig. Files are getting bigger you will need all the room you can get.
I purchased the stock configuration (250gig HD). The only updates I was planning on doing is the additional ram and 2nd HD for the scratch disk. I havent purchased those 2 yet but will soon.
Is Seagate a good reliable brand? I was thinking of getting a Hitachi HD. I have a Hitachi SD in my current tower and havent had any problems.
If I were to get a 400-500gig HD, is it easy to transfer the installed programs / OS to the new drive, make it the bootable drive and use the stock 250 drive as the scratch disk?
Why are you thinking small with a 250Gig? Get 2 750s make your scratch partition the first one make it 100 gig. Files are getting bigger you will need all the room you can get.
