Scratch Disk in C Partition?

From: "Robert E. Williams"

I am considering a computer that has 512 MB of RAM and a 80 GB Hard Drive. … Do you think that with 512 MB of RAM I’d even be using the PS scratch disk?

I usually work on images less than 15 MB and rarely have more than 10 layers working at one time.

Yes, I think you’ll run out of RAM pretty quickly and be working off the disk.

I ran a series of tests recently trying to see how much RAM is needed for CS vs V7. One of the tests used a 6 Mpix digital camera file, which was only slightly bigger than the file you mention (18 MB instead of 15 MB).

I made a very simple action with 5 typical steps (levels, curves, hue/sat, resize to print, USM) and this ran in 13 seconds on V7 and 5 seconds on CS when I had enough RAM.

When I cut the RAM down to 256 MB (which is what it will default to with your 512 MB system) the V7 time doubled to 26 seconds and the CS time almost tripled, to 14 seconds. This is with no extra layers and only one file opened.

You can set the allocation to more than 50%, but the best solution is to buy more RAM.

Bill

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 23:15:03 -0800, "Robert E. Williams" wrote:

I am considering a computer that has 512 MB of RAM and a 80 GB Hard Drive.
It comes with Win Xp installed and I feel sure the H.D. is not partitioned.
Just one humongous C:\ drive.
I could easily spare a few GB for a scratch disk., but I would have to put it on the C:\ drive because I don’t have "Partition Magic" and I am not comfortable using the f-disk utility on a new H.D. to create a separate partition.
Would it do any good to create, say a 3 GB scratch disk on the C:\ drive, or should I just let Win Xp provide the scratch disk space by default.
Do you think that with 512 MB of RAM I’d even be using the PS scratch disk?
I usually work on images less than 15 MB and rarely have more than 10 layers working at one time.
Thanks…..Bob Williams
P.S. The computer comes with nVidia GeForce 4 MX, but it has an open AGP slot.
Does GeForce 4 Mx work pretty well with PS 7 or should I get something like a Matrox 450/550.
I don’t play games so I really don’t need 3D graphics capability. BW

As long as you only have one harddisk drive in your system it doesn’t really matter whether you put your scratch file on the C: drive or on a second partition on the same drive. In fact, if you’d create a small partition at the very end of your disk, like the last 4GB of that 80GB drive, this would be slower than a scratch file somewhere else: The heads would have to move from wherever they are (probably windows pagefile) to the other end of the disk for accessing the scratch file.

Get a cheap second disk and put the scratchfile there.

Image quality of Matrox might be better but when you do not use a dual screen setup ther will be no huge benefit.

Michael

I am considering a computer that has 512 MB of RAM and a 80 GB Hard Drive.
It comes with Win Xp installed and I feel sure the H.D. is not partitioned.
Just one humongous C:\ drive.
I could easily spare a few GB for a scratch disk., but I would have to put it on the C:\ drive because I don’t have "Partition Magic" and I am not comfortable using the f-disk utility on a new H.D. to create a separate partition.
Would it do any good to create, say a 3 GB scratch disk on the C:\ drive, or should I just let Win Xp provide the scratch disk space by default.

I have a separate partition for photoediting. If you create your scratch disk in a partition next to it you will minimize head movement but I doubt it will make a big difference. Somewhat similar to PM, use Control Panel/Admin tools/Computer Mgmt/Disk Mgmt to add/remove partitions in XP.

Martik wrote:

I am considering a computer that has 512 MB of RAM and a 80 GB Hard Drive.
It comes with Win Xp installed and I feel sure the H.D. is not partitioned.
Just one humongous C:\ drive.
I could easily spare a few GB for a scratch disk., but I would have to put it on the C:\ drive because I don’t have "Partition Magic" and I am not comfortable using the f-disk utility on a new H.D. to create a separate partition.
Would it do any good to create, say a 3 GB scratch disk on the C:\ drive, or should I just let Win Xp provide the scratch disk space by default.

I have a separate partition for photoediting. If you create your scratch disk in a partition next to it you will minimize head movement but I doubt it will make a big difference. Somewhat similar to PM, use Control Panel/Admin tools/Computer Mgmt/Disk Mgmt to add/remove partitions in XP.

Thanks you all for your suggestions.
Bill, your experiments with the speed of actions vs RAM size were very interesting.
Back in the "olden" days when we all had 64 MB of RAM, we must have been working out of the H.D. almost all of the time without realizing it. Xaliani, your suggestion about a cheap second H.D. is a good one. I just happen to have an old 4 GB H.D. that I was going to donate to a Christmas Raffle of our computer club. If the computer I’m looking at has a spare bay, I’ll use it as my scratch disk. Only "problem" is…it is a 5400 RPM drive vs a 7200 RPM main drive. Flip side is that I can buy a 40 GB 7200 RPM drive for $50….Decisions….Decisions
Martik, Thanks for your tip on the ability of Xp to create partitions on a new
H.D. I did not know that. I am still plodding along on a 5 year old 430
MHz CPU running Win 98. I have been resisting going with Xp until now to allow time for MS to work out the First Generation bugs. I think that MS is pretty far along that path by now.
Bob Williams

From: "Robert E. Williams"

Xaliani, your suggestion about a cheap second H.D. is a good one. I just happen to have an old 4 GB H.D. that I was going to donate to a Christmas Raffle of our computer club. If the computer I’m looking at has a spare bay, I’ll use it as my scratch disk. Only "problem" is…it is a 5400 RPM drive vs a 7200 RPM main drive.

Bob, I’m pretty sure you’ll find that even a separate 5400 RPM drive will be a lot faster for scratch than sharing one disk.

If you load this drive could you run an experiment where you set the scratch disk to this second drive and run a series of actions or whatever that are too big for RAM and record the times, then set the scratch back to your C drive and run the same tests and compare the times? Would make for an informative post.

Bill

Bill Hilton wrote:

From: "Robert E. Williams"

Xaliani, your suggestion about a cheap second H.D. is a good one. I just happen to have an old 4 GB H.D. that I was going to donate to a Christmas Raffle of our computer club. If the computer I’m looking at has a spare bay, I’ll use it as my scratch disk. Only "problem" is…it is a 5400 RPM drive vs a 7200 RPM main drive.

Bob, I’m pretty sure you’ll find that even a separate 5400 RPM drive will be a lot faster for scratch than sharing one disk.

If you load this drive could you run an experiment where you set the scratch disk to this second drive and run a series of actions or whatever that are too big for RAM and record the times, then set the scratch back to your C drive and run the same tests and compare the times? Would make for an informative post.
Bill

I might give that a try, but it won’t be for a while.
I’m considering the new computer for Christmas.
I agree, it would make an informative post.
I suspect that the time difference would be a strong function of how big the "Action" was.
Bob