Partitioning hard drive for improved PSCS2 performance

SG
Posted By
Stephen_Gingold
May 10, 2005
Views
343
Replies
7
Status
Closed
I was wondering if anyone knew of a good tutorial somewhere on this topic. This is an issue that I have not dealt with until now. Not exclusive to PSCS2, but brought to my attention by the many threads on PSCS2 speed issues. I know that MS has tutorials, but thought some user of PS might have written something explaining it and the best options for PS. I have a 120gb internal HD and two 250 gb external Lacie HDs.
TIA for any suggestions.
Regard,
Stephen

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

C
chrisjbirchall
May 10, 2005
Partitioning your main hard drive will not improve performance in Photoshop. What will make things run smoother though in ensuring the Scratch disk is on a drive other than that which holds Window’s Paging file.

Now it is worth partitioning this second drive, so that the scratch files are always located at the fastest end of the disk. The remaining partition could then be used for file storeage

Have a look at my previous post: chrisjbirchall, "Scrach file and WinXP paging setup for PS CS" #1, 3 Apr 2005 4:21 pm </cgi-bin/webx?14/0>

Hope this helps.

Chris
SG
Stephen_Gingold
May 10, 2005
Thanks, Chris.
My thought was exactly about the scratch disk. I only have 512mb ram, so I figured I must be hitting the scratch disk a lot and partitioning would speed things up. Since my second and third HD’s are external, I was hoping to be able to accomplish this by partitioning the internal. Seems, though, that I’d be better off firing up one of the externals as my scratch.
Thanks for the link to your previous post. If you don’t mind my telling, in reading another website, it seems 24 is the magic number for partitions based on the number of letters available, with a & b already spoken for by other drives.
I appreciate you sharing your setup as a PS user, it helps knowing what’s successful for other users.
Regards,
Stephen

edit: PS- how does one know which part of the disk is faster?
SG
Stephen_Gingold
May 10, 2005
Chris
I partitioned one of the Lacie’s into three parts. 2 100gb partitions and a @37 gb. I then selected in prefs that the first partition be my scratch disk- 100gbs worth. I then tried to open a large @680mb file- slide scan with layers and PK sharpening layers- and it took @ 5 minutes to open. Longer than before by @ 3 minutes.
What should I have done? I think the file should have loaded a bit faster. Thanks
Stephen
C
chrisjbirchall
May 10, 2005
Seems, though, that I’d be better off firing up one of the externals as my scratch.

Hmmm. Not so sure. Data transfer is going to be faster on an internal drive so you may actually lose the advantage. Is there no way you could fit an extra internal IDE or SATA drive or are you using a laptop?

how does one know which part of the disk is faster?

The fastest partition is the first one created on the drive.

Partition Magic (and probably other partitioning programs) gives a visual representation of the partitions.

Chris.
SG
Stephen_Gingold
May 10, 2005
Hi Chris
I did set the first created as my first scratch disk.. A second internal for my desktop would be nice, but at this stage I cannot swing it financially. I’m trying to do the best with what I’ve got.
Of course, maybe I should try a smaller file for comparison, but since I’ve got @250 mb RAM I figured I’d need to open something much larger to see what I had done.
Presently as an "advanced amateur" I’m not positioned to invest as much as I’d like. Seems that my best bet would be to add a couple gigs of RAM but can’t do that either. Guess I’ll just read a PSCS2 book while the files chug along.
Thanks for your help.
Regards,
Stephen
G
goodidea1950SPAM-SPAM
May 10, 2005
If you use XP, you can assign a hard drive
to an empty folder and save a drive letter. I’m not sure of the right name but I do it on one of my drives and CDs.
Go to ‘manage’:
by right clicking the "My computer" icon.
Left click "disk management"
right click on the drive you want to assign to a folder
left click "change drive letter and paths"
left click on "add"
check box for "mount in the following empty NTFS folder" Enter the path for the folder
click ‘OK"
then remove the old drive letter to free it for another drive.

This only works on NTFS formatted drives.
I think the drives can be unlimited and each appears
as a folder on the drive where you put the empty folder.

wrote in message
: Thanks, Chris.
: My thought was exactly about the scratch disk. I only have 512mb ram, so I figured I must be hitting the scratch disk a lot and partitioning would speed things up. Since my second and third HD’s are external, I was hoping to be able to accomplish this by partitioning the internal. Seems, though, that I’d be better off firing up one of the externals as my scratch. : Thanks for the link to your previous post. If you don’t mind my telling, in reading another website, it seems 24 is the magic number for partitions based on the number of letters available, with a & b already spoken for by other drives.
: I appreciate you sharing your setup as a PS user, it helps knowing what’s successful for other users.
: Regards,
: Stephen
:
: edit: PS- how does one know which part of the disk is faster?
G
goodidea1950SPAM-SPAM
May 11, 2005
wrote in message
:
:
: Seems, though, that I’d be better off firing up one of the externals as
: my scratch.
:
:
:
:
: Hmmm. Not so sure. Data transfer is going to be faster on an internal drive so you may actually lose the advantage. Is there no way you could fit an extra internal IDE or SATA drive or are you using a laptop? :
: how does one know which part of the disk is faster? :
:
:
:
: The fastest partition is the first one created on the drive. :
: Partition Magic (and probably other partitioning programs) gives a visual representation of the partitions.
:
: Chris.

An internal drive is not necessarily faster than
an external. USB2 or Firewire drive. If I were
going to do it over, I would buy 4 ATA drives
and set them up as a raid configuration . One read
and one write, ie one to hold the files and one as
a scratch disk. That would effectively double the
read and write speed, at least that’s how a salesman
explained it to me. Since the drives act as one there
is twice the amount of writing and reading done
because there are two heads, one on each of the
paired drives which are splitting the file between
them… But this is hard to backup, ie if one drive
goes down the other is useless for recovery so
there should be another drive to archive the work
before opening.

I am no expert and would like better info myself,
so the real experts …. please chime in. : -)

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections