Scratchdisc Suggestion :o)

MH
Posted By
M.H._Frandsen
Nov 11, 2008
Views
314
Replies
12
Status
Closed
Hello all,

This is my first post, and I was hoping someone can help me out. I’m looking to add a seperate internal HD to use as the Photoshop Scratch exclusively. I’am considering the WD Raptor 36GB SATA 16MB 10000RPM.

My question is: Size-wise, will 36GB be enough?

I’m on a budget. I can almost get 2 x 160GB SATA 7200 for the price of the 1 x Raptor 36GB, so I really want to be sure I’m doing the rigth thing and aiming for speed.

My Set-Up would then be:
Internal 1: 320 GB 7200 (main drive / programs & system installations) Internal 2: 36 GB Rapter (photoshop scratchdisc exclusive) External 1: 500 GB Mybook (all documents)

Ideas suggestions are much welcome!

Sincerely
M.H. Frandsen

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F
Freeagent
Nov 11, 2008
36 GB is on the smallish side, but for most normal file sizes it should do just fine. The speed is great. Just make sure you set a secondary scratch disk just in case.

Personally, I’d go for two 7200 drives as RAID 0, which would probably be just as fast, if not faster. But it depends on the RAID controller. Some on-board controllers aren’t all that good, and a dedicated PCI-e RAID card will cost you about the same as the raptor.
MH
M.H._Frandsen
Nov 11, 2008
Thanks for the reply. So if I went with the Raptor as my Primary and my main 320 GB as my secondary that would be good? (my main 320GB has about 180 GB free-space and I have all the app’s I need installed).
F
Freeagent
Nov 11, 2008
That should work fine. If the scratch file does overflow you’ll notice a speed bump of course, but as long as the disk is well maintained and defragmented you’ll go clear of the dreaded "out of memory" message.

But like I said, if you work on reasonably normal file sizes, 36 GB should be enough.
P
PECourtejoie
Nov 12, 2008
My question would be to know if any test was done with SSDs as scratch disks…
F
Freeagent
Nov 12, 2008
I’m waiting for that, too. By all reports I’ve seen so far, there’s no significant speed advantage with SSDs yet. But it’s only a matter of time.
MH
M.H._Frandsen
Nov 12, 2008
I’m really unsure whether to invest in a whole new PC or invest in these upgrades for my current HP AMD 64 X2 3800+ / 4GB RAM.

Basically I’m aiming at optimizing my PC to (almost) exclusively run the Adobe App’s really smooth…(mostly Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign!)

_______________________

For the upgrades I would get:

– Raptor 150 GB HD 16MB Cache as Scratch.

– Change my Graphics Card to Geforce 9400GT. From what I can understand, it would go well with the new Adobe CS4 engine.

– I’m also looking at investing in Vista 64 Bit, im currently running XP 32bit. _______________________

So what do you think? A whole new PC or these upgrades…Any insight would be very much appreciated!

– Mikkel
JJ
John Joslin
Nov 12, 2008
there’s no significant speed advantage with SSDs yet

< http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/233001/intel-x25m.html?search String=ssd>
H
Ho
Nov 13, 2008
My question would be to know if any test was done with SSDs as scratch disks…

Exactly. Most, if not all, of the tests I’ve seen report things like boot times or time for Photoshop to load. Obviously these tests aren’t designed by anyone who actually uses Photoshop, or the Scratch test would be near the top of the list.
CC
Chris_Cox
Nov 13, 2008
The very highest end SSDs show some speed benefit. But they are more expensive than a RAID setup of cheap disks.
BC
Bart_Cross
Nov 13, 2008
RAID: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.
CC
Chris_Cox
Nov 13, 2008
Tell that to the guys who insist you need 15k RPM drives for a decent RAID array…
BC
Bart_Cross
Nov 13, 2008
I still use JBOD.

There is so much more to the equation than just spindle speed and I am sure you are already aware of that.

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