Use of 2nd hard drive as a scratch disc

MA
Posted By
Matthew_A_Kraus
Oct 26, 2003
Views
398
Replies
7
Status
Closed
I am using Windows 98 SE. What are advatages vs disadvantages of adding a second hard drive to use as scratch disc and to speed up Photoshop 7.0? I have 1024 MB of RAM. If I install a second hard drive, does it need to be same make and size as original hard drive? Thanks.
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disk drive hard scratch use

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Robert_Levine
Oct 26, 2003
IMO, if you’re going to spend the money, I’d buy a copy of WinXP instead of second harddrive. You’ll likely see more of an increase in performance with WinXP than you will with a second harddrive.

Just my $0.02,

Bob
RO
Robert_Oliver
Oct 26, 2003
I have 1024 MB of RAM. If I install a second hard drive, does it need to be same make and size as original hard drive? Thanks.

IF you have 1 gig of RAM, you might not need a second hard drive as Photoshop would be much less likely to need scratch space.

However, this depends a lot on the size files that you normally work with.
L
LenHewitt
Oct 26, 2003
If I install a second hard drive, does it need to be same make and size as
original hard drive? <<

No. You may occasionally find two drives that don’t play well together when on the same IDE channel, but that is very rare these days,

What are advatages vs disadvantages <<

The only disadvantage is you have to pay for a 2nd drive.
M
marionbabich
Oct 27, 2003
Right on Robert. I just upgraded to a new system with xp coming from win 98. It is night and day the speed I gained. What used to take 20 seconds to render is almost instant now.

My 2 cents.
DM
dave_milbut
Oct 27, 2003
Rob Levine, I agree. XP will get you more boost than a second drive.

Rob O, PS uses the scratch disk as it’s main memory. Almost EVERYTHING goes through there. It uses RAM as a cache to speed up operations. Basically the opposite of what the scratch file does in windows.
JC
James_Collins
Oct 27, 2003
Win 98SE will not ordinarily use more than 512 meg of ram without adjustment to some system files. If you have not made those (I can no longer remember which) then go to the Microsoft site and do a search on win98 and ram to find the necessary adjustments. Or go to WinXP which will use 1 gig of ram or more.
L
LenHewitt
Oct 27, 2003
Robert,

IF you have 1 gig of RAM, …..Photoshop would be much less likely to need
scratch space.<<

NOT SO!

Photoshop uses the Scratch as its PRIME memory. It uses the installed RAM as a cache for that Scratch. A Scratch file is created AS SOON AS YOU OPEN PHOTOSHOP! regardless of how much installed RAM is available

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