Disk partitioning for PS

P
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partition
May 5, 2004
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I’m building a custom WinXP PC for Photoshop CS with 1G of ram and two 80G hds C and D. The two hds will be used for PS as well as for other applications. My PS editing typically begins with a ~120MB scanned file. Here are some partitioning options I’m considering and would appreciate your comments:

1. C unpartitioned, PS on C. D unpartitioned, PS image files and PS scratch disk space on D.
2. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D unpartitioned, PS scratch disk space on D.
3. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D partitioned into D (75G) and E (5G), PS scratch disk space on E.

Katrin Eismann’s "PS Restoration and Retouching" (great book) recommends something like option 3. The idea is to keep the E partition from being fragmented for a better PS scratch disk space performance. Is there any merit to this?

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J
Jim
May 5, 2004
wrote in message
I’m building a custom WinXP PC for Photoshop CS with 1G of ram and two 80G hds C and D. The two hds will be used for PS as well as for other applications. My PS editing typically begins with a ~120MB scanned file. Here are some partitioning options I’m considering and would appreciate your comments:

1. C unpartitioned, PS on C. D unpartitioned, PS image files and PS scratch disk space on D.
2. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D unpartitioned, PS scratch disk space on D.
3. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D partitioned into D (75G) and E (5G), PS scratch disk space on E.

Katrin Eismann’s "PS Restoration and Retouching" (great book) recommends something like option 3. The idea is to keep the E partition from being fragmented for a better PS scratch disk space performance. Is there any merit to this?
I would put PS on drive C. I would partition drive D as you mentioned. I would put the image files in one partition of drive D.
I would put the PS scratch space in the other partition of drive D. I would not be surprised to find negligible difference between
and of your choices.

Firstly, I am not convinced that there is much merit to fear of fragmentation, expecially as PS is supposed to clean up after itself. Secondly, there no significant improvement in performance in use of partitions.
Thirdly, segregating the image files to their own disk does improve performance and does help management of the image files.

Jim
S
Stephan
May 5, 2004
wrote in message
I’m building a custom WinXP PC for Photoshop CS with 1G of ram and two 80G hds C and D. The two hds will be used for PS as well as for other applications. My PS editing typically begins with a ~120MB scanned file. Here are some partitioning options I’m considering and would appreciate your comments:

1. C unpartitioned, PS on C. D unpartitioned, PS image files and PS scratch disk space on D.
2. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D unpartitioned, PS scratch disk space on D.
3. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D partitioned into D (75G) and E (5G), PS scratch disk space on E.

Katrin Eismann’s "PS Restoration and Retouching" (great book) recommends something like option 3. The idea is to keep the E partition from being fragmented for a better PS scratch disk space performance. Is there any merit to this?

With all respect to Eismann, it won’t make any difference. The only way to use a scratch disk efficiently is to have it on a separate drive and that drive MUST be on another channel.
You PC can’t read or write simultaneously on two hard drives in the same channel if you have Eide drives (most likely).
Better is to have as much RAM as your board takes so you don’t even need a scratch disk in the end.
I also recommend keeping your programs and your work on different drives

Stephan
XT
xalinai_Two
May 5, 2004
On Wed, 05 May 2004 19:14:23 GMT, wrote:

I’m building a custom WinXP PC for Photoshop CS with 1G of ram and two 80G hds C and D. The two hds will be used for PS as well as for other applications. My PS editing typically begins with a ~120MB scanned file. Here are some partitioning options I’m considering and would appreciate your comments:

1. C unpartitioned, PS on C. D unpartitioned, PS image files and PS scratch disk space on D.
2. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D unpartitioned, PS scratch disk space on D.
3. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D partitioned into D (75G) and E (5G), PS scratch disk space on E.

If C, D, and E are real, independent drives, version 3 is best.

If you have only one disk, it doesn’t really matter but splitting it into several partitions will result in higher disk activity and more system resources used. Disk heads work in the first partition, then mover over most of the disk to write the scratch file, move back to the system drive….

If you have one disk only, split it in two partitions – one for the OS, the space where you install applications and the pagefile, the other for user data, images, whatever. I’d even put the PS scratchfiles on the OS partition to eliminate disk activity.

If you have one more disk, the first thing that gets moved to the new disk are the scratch files, then the pagefile.

If you have three disks, I’d use the smallest for OS and apps (if more than 10 GB, otherwise use it for scratch and pagefile), the fastest for scratch and pagefiles, and the largest for data.

Katrin Eismann’s "PS Restoration and Retouching" (great book) recommends something like option 3. The idea is to keep the E partition from being fragmented for a better PS scratch disk space performance. Is there any merit to this?

If your pagefile is not controlled by Windows but set to a reasonably large size and your scratch files are allocated before the disks got defragnmented there will be no fragmentation on their partition.

If you have only one disk and decide to have a small partition for those files, try to arrange your disk in a manner that pagefile and scratch are in the same area of the disk.

Michael
D
Don
May 6, 2004
I agree that any of those are good,although I personally prefer #1. However, I suggest you might want to consider a larger drive for the one containing the image files if you’re going to have very many 120MB data files.

Also, 1GB is a little small for files that large. Out of 1GB, only about 300-350 MB will be available for data in PS unless you change the default memory allocation. The first time you generate a new layer it will start to slow down. I would recommend 2GB, and allocate 80-85% to PS.

Don

wrote in message
I’m building a custom WinXP PC for Photoshop CS with 1G of ram and two 80G hds C and D. The two hds will be used for PS as well as for other applications. My PS editing typically begins with a ~120MB scanned file. Here are some partitioning options I’m considering and would appreciate your comments:

1. C unpartitioned, PS on C. D unpartitioned, PS image files and PS scratch disk space on D.
2. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D unpartitioned, PS scratch disk space on D.
3. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D partitioned into D (75G) and E (5G), PS scratch disk space on E.

Katrin Eismann’s "PS Restoration and Retouching" (great book) recommends something like option 3. The idea is to keep the E partition from being fragmented for a better PS scratch disk space performance. Is there any merit to this?
HL
Harvey L
May 6, 2004
My two cents: Why not partition disk0 and have your os on C (disk0) and the ps on D (disk0). Make the partition about 5-10 M larger than what XP needs, put your os swap file on the same drive as ps and put the scratch disk and image files on E (disk1). I don’t think that ps will be accessing both scratch space and actual file on a regular basis. Having your swap disk on a separate channel will enable your computer to better take care of information going to and from the disks at the same time. B.T.W try to find the HD with the greatest amount of onboard cache
wrote in message
I’m building a custom WinXP PC for Photoshop CS with 1G of ram and two 80G hds C and D. The two hds will be used for PS as well as for other applications. My PS editing typically begins with a ~120MB scanned file. Here are some partitioning options I’m considering and would appreciate your comments:

1. C unpartitioned, PS on C. D unpartitioned, PS image files and PS scratch disk space on D.
2. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D unpartitioned, PS scratch disk space on D.
3. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D partitioned into D (75G) and E (5G), PS scratch disk space on E.

Katrin Eismann’s "PS Restoration and Retouching" (great book) recommends something like option 3. The idea is to keep the E partition from being fragmented for a better PS scratch disk space performance. Is there any merit to this?
J
JJS
May 6, 2004
Going back to an earlier post (which I lost): was it said that Windows XP does _not_ support overlap seeks across drives? I would find that very hard to believe; certainly separate spindles is a good thing. No?
A
adykes
May 6, 2004
In article wrote:
I’m building a custom WinXP PC for Photoshop CS with 1G of ram and two 80G hds C and D. The two hds will be used for PS as well as for other applications. My PS editing typically begins with a ~120MB scanned file. Here are some partitioning options I’m considering and would appreciate your comments:

1. C unpartitioned, PS on C. D unpartitioned, PS image files and PS scratch disk space on D.
2. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D unpartitioned, PS scratch disk space on D.
3. C unpartitioned, PS and PS image files on C. D partitioned into D (75G) and E (5G), PS scratch disk space on E.

Katrin Eismann’s "PS Restoration and Retouching" (great book) recommends something like option 3. The idea is to keep the E partition from being fragmented for a better PS scratch disk space performance. Is there any merit to this?

Slightly OT: Whatever you do, all partitions should be NTFS.

Set pagefile size MIN=MAX (in controlpanel/system/advanced)

I’d start with a pagefile a little larger than RAM, then watch it with Task Manager while heavily using PS, and whatever other apps you use.


Al Dykes
———–
adykes at p a n i x . c o m

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