Down to a crawl

Joe Strike wrote:

I’m running PS7 on my PC with a 2.53 gig processor & 700megs of RAM (jeez, don’t I sound like I know what I"m talking about? Don’t let that fool you…)

Working with some large but not enormous files – 64 megs & thereabout, but I should have enough power to handle them. When I start out things aren’t too bad, but very quickly the program slows to a crawl & then freezes up altogether. I have the memory cache set to 1 but that doesn’t seem to be helping. Any suggestions from anyone? Could it be a spyware problem

Hi Joe,
What is the version of your operating system? What is the capacity of your hard drive and how much free space does it have?

Good luck,
Ron

I’m running xp home.

My C drive is 60 gig. I actually got a "drive nearly full" message yesterday & it was indeed down to a sliver of free space on the pie chart. I transferred a bunch of folders to a backup (250 gig) drive & now have 9.6 gig free vs. 45 gig filled up on the C drive.

Any chance there’s an enormous hidden cache of .tmp files clogging up my C drive? My backup drive is 90% empty; would switching Pshop over to that drive speed things up? (Of course I have no idea how to make a switch like that, or even if you can.)

Thanks a bunch
Joe

Hi Joe,
What is the version of your operating system? What is the capacity of your hard drive and how much free space does it have?

Good luck,
Ron

Joe Strike wrote:

I’m running xp home.

My C drive is 60 gig. I actually got a "drive nearly full" message yesterday & it was indeed down to a sliver of free space on the pie chart. I transferred a bunch of folders to a backup (250 gig) drive & now have 9.6 gig free vs. 45 gig filled up on the C drive.
Any chance there’s an enormous hidden cache of .tmp files clogging up my C drive? My backup drive is 90% empty; would switching Pshop over to that drive speed things up? (Of course I have no idea how to make a switch like that, or even if you can.)

It is possible to relocate Photoshop’s scratchpad and cache drives to a separate drive but I would not. I assume your external drive uses a USB cable and those kinds of drives are not good for things like that. One thing you could move to your external drive without a problem is your photo library. I think you are on the right track. It would probably be a good idea to make another pass through your c drive to see if there are more non-Photoshop related files you can relocate.

Good luck,
Ron

In article ,
says…

Joe Strike wrote:

I’m running xp home.

My C drive is 60 gig. I actually got a "drive nearly full" message yesterday & it was indeed down to a sliver of free space on the pie chart. I transferred a bunch of folders to a backup (250 gig) drive & now have 9.6 gig free vs. 45 gig filled up on the C drive.
Any chance there’s an enormous hidden cache of .tmp files clogging up my C drive? My backup drive is 90% empty; would switching Pshop over to that drive speed things up? (Of course I have no idea how to make a switch like that, or even if you can.)

It is possible to relocate Photoshop’s scratchpad and cache drives to a separate drive but I would not. I assume your external drive uses a USB cable and those kinds of drives are not good for things like that. One thing you could move to your external drive without a problem is your photo library. I think you are on the right track. It would probably be a good idea to make another pass through your c drive to see if there are more non-Photoshop related files you can relocate.
Good luck,
Ron

Joe,

Sounds like you’re running on a laptop. First, your RAM is very low for PS. Next your Scratch Disk probably cannot take up the slack.

A couple of options: pick up a few removable HDDs and use one for image storage and the other for Scratch Disk. Seems that you alrealy have one. As for the Scratch Disk on removable media, I did some tests from my laptop (3.2GHz, 2GB RAM and an 80GB HDD). I posted these tests to this NG and there was dialog with Bill Hilton, regarding the results. I have poured over my documents, and cannot locate those test results, but a Google.Groups search of the NG should yield them. IIRC, the fastest response to some PS Actions was with C:\ (probably filled to the 40GB range), then the 250GB Maxtors on FW- 400, then those disks with USB2.0. What surprised me was the lack of a performance hit. Yes, it was there, but it was much smaller, than I had anticipated. Bill Hilton asked for another battery of tests, but I got buried with work, and didn’t get back to the test. Besides my new workstation arrived about that time, and all free time was spent loading up all of my Adobe products and getting it up and running.

Another option would be to take out your CD/DVD player, if you have one. Replace it with another HDD (D:\) and pick up an external FW CD/DVD player. Remember, that if you had to do a reinstall of your OS, or similar, you might well have to stick your internal CD/DVD player back into the machine, as the FW might not be seen at the machine level in a crash, or major mess-up.

I’m anticipating doing the same for this laptop, but keeping my internal unit, in case of an emergency.

Last – stick as much RAM into your machine, as will fit. PS will use ALL of it.

Hunt

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In article ,
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Joe Strike wrote:

I’m running xp home.

[SNIP]

Joe,

Here is the link to my initial test – as I stated, Bill Hilton had some other thoughts, and I found another similar thread, where Cris Cox of Adobe had some negative thoughts, regarding using removable HDDs for Scratch Disks. In my case, CP-MCE (SP-1 then), PS didn’t balk at all. Cris’ comments may have pertained to earlier OSs, or maybe my configuration doesn’t flag the Maxtors as removable. LINK: http://www.pcboard.in/viewtopic.php?p=23520

Hunt

Hunt wrote:

I did some tests from my laptop
(3.2GHz, 2GB RAM and an 80GB HDD). I posted these tests to this NG and there was dialog with Bill Hilton, regarding the results. I have poured over my documents, and cannot locate those test results, but a Google.Groups search of the NG should yield them. IIRC, the fastest response to some PS Actions was with C:\ (probably filled to the 40GB range), then the 250GB Maxtors on FW- 400, then those disks with USB2.0. What surprised me was the lack of a performance hit. Yes, it was there, but it was much smaller, than I had

Hunt

Just to be clear, the primary (although I would expect a performance hit) reason I recommended that the USB drive not to be used as an integral part of Photoshop (scratch pad) is because this type of drive tends to get used for other purposes – it is part of their allure. I do not think it would be a good idea to let XP and Adobe try to recover from a missing scratch drive only to have it replaced later. If the external drive used is a SCSI or other semi-permanent interface then I would recommend offloading the folder/s.

Ron

Wow, lots of good advice…

FYI, my 250 gig drive is internal, and I’m using a desktop PC.

Today the machine is running nice ‘n speedy, go figure. Some sort of indigestion the last day or two? One thing I will do is load up some more RAM. What the hell, the stuff’s cheap.

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says…

Wow, lots of good advice…

FYI, my 250 gig drive is internal, and I’m using a desktop PC.
Today the machine is running nice ‘n speedy, go figure. Some sort of indigestion the last day or two? One thing I will do is load up some more RAM. What the hell, the stuff’s cheap.

Glad that things are working for you. Sorry for all of the incorrect assumptions. Yes, RAM is cheap. I can buy 2GB for about the same price that it cost me to go from 356K to 512K, including the add-on board. Same for HDDs. I’m about to pick up 2 750GB ATA 300s at US$330/ea. These will be internal file storage for vid & still image files in a system w/ 2TB of internal SATAII and 2TB on LAN/Gigabit, plus 500MB with a couple of Maxtor 250GBs via USB. I could hook up the other 4 250GB Maxtors and run all 6 via FW-400, but I have ’em hooked to other machines.

In your case, I’d try and add one large HDD (if your controller will handle it), and set it just for Scratch Disk space. This would give you the 60GB (did I remember that correctly?) for OS and program, the 250GB for image files and the new large (fast as you can handle) one just for Scratch Disk.

Only consideration (after you add more RAM) would be where the Win Virtual Memory Page File is located. This may depend on your OS. I’ve been experimenting with breaking it up (8GB total for my 4GB RAM), between two HDDs (not OS/program) and trying to map which is better. So far, I cannot get a good benchmark, as I have not had a file large enough to impact it. One day, I’ll have the time to grab one of my triple-truck 1000ppi files and do a real benchmark. Until then, I’ve got the Page File split onto 2 big SATAII’s and all is well.

Hope the system keeps going well,

Hunt

In article ,
says…

Hunt wrote:

I did some tests from my laptop
(3.2GHz, 2GB RAM and an 80GB HDD). I posted these tests to this NG and

there

was dialog with Bill Hilton, regarding the results. I have poured over my documents, and cannot locate those test results, but a Google.Groups search

of

the NG should yield them. IIRC, the fastest response to some PS Actions was with C:\ (probably filled to the 40GB range), then the 250GB Maxtors on FW- 400, then those disks with USB2.0. What surprised me was the lack of a performance hit. Yes, it was there, but it was much smaller, than I had

Hunt

Just to be clear, the primary (although I would expect a performance hit) reason I recommended that the USB drive not to be used as an integral part of Photoshop (scratch pad) is because this type of drive tends to get used for other purposes – it is part of their allure. I do not think it would be a good idea to let XP and Adobe try to recover from a missing scratch drive only to have it replaced later. If the external drive used is a SCSI or other semi-permanent interface then I would recommend offloading the folder/s.

Ron

Ron,

I agree. In the case of my laptop, I tried several setups to see what I could work best with. I was surprised at the lack of real difference. I had expected that everything on C:\ would be the fastest, until the file size got large enough to bottleneck, but what I did not expect was that the Maxtors on either USB 2.0, or FW-400, would be so close. I expected FW to be a clear #2 and USB
2.0 to be down the line. Bill Hilton suggested that my 2GB RAM might well be
confusing the benchmark, and made some great suggestions for taxing the system even more. I have his suggestions, and hope to try them, just to learn the pitfalls of an external.

In the good-old-days, I had a SCSI box filled with all of my old HDDs, that I set up for PS as Scratch Disks. In those times, PS was limited to 4GBx4, so those old SCSI-2 drives were great. Nowadays, one cannot imagine, let alone purchase/assemble, the Scratch Disk that PS can access.

Hunt

Hunt wrote:

Nowadays, one cannot imagine, let alone
purchase/assemble, the Scratch Disk that PS can access.

Hunt

I don’t know, a couple of these:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=6776&A =details&Q=&sku=465799&is=REG&addedTroughTyp e=categoryNavigation

would give PS a lot of elbow room:)

Ron

Hunt wrote:

[…]
Another option would be to take out your CD/DVD player, if you have one. Replace it with another HDD […]

That’s an interesting idea.

[…] Remember, that if you had to do a reinstall of your OS, or similar, you might well have to stick your internal CD/DVD player back into the machine, as the FW might not be seen at the machine level in a crash, or major mess-up.

No problem there. The startup devices can be set at the BIOS level.

Last – stick as much RAM into your machine, as will fit. PS will use ALL of it.

🙂 Well, up to 1.8gb, anyway.

wrote:

I don’t know, a couple of these:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=6776&A =details&Q=&sku=465799&is=REG&addedTroughTyp e=categoryNavigation

would give PS a lot of elbow room:)

In the old days when 4mhz was the speed champion and 64K was the memory limit, a chap put an array of RAM chips on a disc controller (Norton saw it as a 64-platter disc). I could fit the entire C development package on it.

I thought I would like to do that today – maybe 64gb RAM disc for paging and scratch files.

Then along comes Vista which seems to be suggesting that it will support internal Flash media for certain things, possibly a boot or hibernate image. Stay tuned for some interesting hacks on that.

In article ,
says…

Hunt wrote:

Nowadays, one cannot imagine, let alone
purchase/assemble, the Scratch Disk that PS can access.

Hunt

I don’t know, a couple of these:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?

O=6776&A=details&Q=&sku=465799&i

s=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

would give PS a lot of elbow room:)

Ron

Yes, PLENTY of "elbow room!"
Hunt

In article , says…

Hunt wrote:

[…]
Another option would be to take out your CD/DVD player, if you have one. Replace it with another HDD […]

That’s an interesting idea.

[…] Remember, that if you had to do a reinstall of your OS, or similar, you might well have to stick your internal CD/DVD player back into the machine, as the FW might not be seen at the machine level in a crash, or major mess-up.

No problem there. The startup devices can be set at the BIOS level.

Last – stick as much RAM into your machine, as will fit. PS will use ALL of it.

🙂 Well, up to 1.8gb, anyway.

Since the OP doesn’t have the bay limitations that I thought, he’d be best to populate all that he has cooling and controller space for. This is about where I am with my laptop. I had the intention of swapping out the battery, as I always run it from AC, but there are a few little mechanical glitches with that idea, and Toshiba will not answer my questions – so before I get out the Dremel, I’ll try the CD bay, using my FW-400 Memorex DVD in its place.

If it works, I’ll post how it went and what limitations I encounter. I’ve got an extra 80GB Toshiba HDD and hardware sitting around. If it flys, maybe I’ll pickup a laptop 120GB or even larger, if they become available.

Hunt

Hi Joe,

Joe Strike wrote:

Today the machine is running nice ‘n speedy, go figure. Some sort of indigestion the last day or two? One thing I will do is load up some more RAM. What the hell, the stuff’s cheap.

Any kind of unusual slowdown and the first thing I do is run virus and spyware checking software to make sure that the machine is clean. Some spyware/virus software is even worse than the virus/spywares as they slow everything to a crawl. Make sure you are not running multiple virus/spyware as resident shields at the same time as that is a sure way to make things very slow. I run virus/spyware scans once a week and when I get suspicious but inbetween I try to make them as light as possible. You can add 10GB of memory and a hundred drives, internal or external, and it doesn’t mean a thing if your CPU is clogged up with tasks that it has to perform all the time, such as scanning every single diskwrite/read for spyware/virus infection.

Best regards,

Arnor Baldvinsson
San Antonio, Texas