Scratch disk questions

AD
Posted By
ASA Dragon
Sep 18, 2003
Views
319
Replies
2
Status
Closed
Sorry to ask questions that have already been asked (and expertly answered) so many times before, but I really need some peace of mind.

I recently checked out a book from the public library to help me better understand photoshop. There is a part where it says "Don’t put a scratch disk on your C drive". The thing is, I can’t partition this drive (yet).
I have a little over 650MB of RAM and my photoshop preference set at 50%. I also have 1GB set aside for virtual memory, and around 56GB free on my HD. I have used photoshop several times, with no problems.

My question is this – Will having the scratch disk on my C drive be detrimental to my computer?

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance …
Related Tags
disk question scratch

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

Y
YrbkMgr
Sep 18, 2003
Will having the scratch disk on my C drive be detrimental to my computer?

Absolutely NOT. I ran that way with far more modest specs than yours for 1.5 years. Whoever wrote the book was somewhat misinformed. That statement would mean that you MUST have two hard drives to operate photoshop, which is false.

The theory is, if your windows swapfile is on the C drive, and you have a lot of hard drive activity, and you are working on an image where photoshop has created a large temporary file on the scratch disk, wouldn’t it make more sense to prevent access to the Windows swapfile from competing with access to the temporary file? The answer is yes.

Performance gain? Rarely. Only in the most extreme of circumstances.

So ideally, partition then right? No. If your goal is to optimize hard disk accesses for BOTH the windows swapfile and the temporary file, partitioning your drive does not accomplish this – there is still "time sharing" involved since it’s only one HD, and one r/w head trying to access both files.

So the only thing one can do is either add a second drive, or leave it on C.

In your circumstance, leave it on C, no harm will come. If your system begins to "dog", it won’t be because of the swapfile being on C.

Peace,
Tony
AD
ASA Dragon
Sep 20, 2003
Thank you very much for your quick and informative response. In some instances I am still learning much about both computers and the programs that I am running. Since posting the question I have checked several other print resources, and none of those others said anything similar to that first book.

Thanks again ..

MacBook Pro 16” Mockups 🔥

– in 4 materials (clay versions included)

– 12 scenes

– 48 MacBook Pro 16″ mockups

– 6000 x 4500 px

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections