Scratch disk on new laptop

MF
Posted By
Many_Feathers
Jul 24, 2004
Views
285
Replies
4
Status
Closed
I just got a new Fujitsu laptop and it is already partitioned with a 1.9 gig "D" partition in order to build a backup image of the C drive so that if there is a system failure, I can restore it to it’s original state. It’s utility will allow me to add some of my own programs and then create the backup image.

I’m thinking rather than doing the backup image (it is on a DVD now and I can create a new one on a DVD), I should just use that partition as my scratch disk for Photoshop.

Any comments are greatly appreciated…

MF
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MM
Mick_Murphy
Jul 24, 2004
That is too small for a PS scratch partition.
CC
Conrad_Chavez
Jul 24, 2004
Not only is 1.9 gigs small, but you will either see no performance benefit or a performance degradation.

Ideally, the scratch disk should be an entirely separate disk, so that one disk concentrates on processing and the other concentrates on scratch. If you only have one disk and set the scratch disk to be a different partition on the same disk, your disk’s read/write heads are simply going to spend a lot of time shuttling between the working partition and the scratch partition, and that might reduce efficiency.
MF
Many_Feathers
Jul 24, 2004
Hi Conrad,

I thought if you didn’t have 2 separate physical hard drives, the next best thing was partitioning your single hard drive (this is a laptop…not a desktop). Has that thinking changed?

If 1.9 gig is not large enough, how large should it be?

As always, thanks for your help…

MF
CC
Conrad_Chavez
Jul 26, 2004
I could be wrong but I think the only real benefit of partitioning a single disk for Photoshop (and other high-performance apps is to reduce the effect of disk fragmentation. Reserving a separate partition lets you take care of fragmentation by erasing the volume every once in a while. But the performance gain from doing that isn’t as much as you would get from connecting another disk to use as a scratch disk.

As far as the size, 1.9 GB may be big enough, but this is one of those questions where the answer is "it depends." If you’re just doing simple web graphics with rare use of layers, Photoshop might not set aside that much in scratch files, but if you’re editing multiple 300dpi magazine photos with many layers and masks you could overrun that pretty easily. You might want to monitor how far disk space goes down when you edit one of your typical images, and that would tell you.

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