A fast drive with a decent cache (such as the one you mention) will do the trick. Partition the disk with a 10 – 20 GB chunk for the scratch disk. The rest of the drive can be used for storage and archive but not for work-in-progress Photoshop files.
The idea is for it not to be doing anything else whilst Photoshop in using the scratch.
You can use it for data for other programs which won’t be accessing the drive whilst you are using Photoshop.
Chris.
Chris,
Thank you very much for the comprehensive reply. I’ll just use another HD like the main. The Partition sounds like a good idea. I do a lot of composites w/ Photos that I take and I like having tons of them on my computer for browsing and inspiration.(The partitioned scratch drive would be a great place to store my permanent archive of images.)
I’m glad I asked..
Have a Great Day!
Firebird 🙂
a great place to store my permanent archive of images
I use an external LaCie 250GB drive.
Hi
I’ve been reading the FAQs about setting up PS to get the maximum performance but I’m not sure I’ve got it right.
I have 2 hard drives, both with 2 partitions. Drive 1 30Gb is split C=12Gb which hold my OS & Programs inc PS, & D=18Gb for my Docs, Outlook files etc. Drive 2 80Gb split G=60Gb for my image files & H=20Gb for my system Ghost images and My Docs backups.
I’m using an AMD 1Ghz processor & 1Gb RAM. I’ve set RAM usage to 80% and I’ve set G and 1st scratch disk & D as second. I also have and external HD for a back up of my image files.
Bridge takes an age to cache new RAW files as it is so I don’t want to rely on external HDs for my main image storage. What the best thing to do to to get PS running at its best?
Input welcome
Clive
Hi Clive.
You have your primary Scratch Disk on the second physical drive and that’s okay. The important thing is to have it on a different Physical drive to the one containing the Windows paging file so they don’t compete for read/write cycles.
Ideally, you would use a third drive just for scratch (plus perhaps a partition for archive and backup). Even having your image files on the same drive can cause some slow-down because Photoshop will be reading from scratch at the same time as it is writing to disk when you save an image.
I’ve set RAM usage to 80%… <SNIP> …Bridge takes an age to cache new RAW files
Try dropping the percentage allocated to Photoshop back to its default of 55%. Bridge runs outside of Photoshop’s allocation, so you’ve not left it very much to work with. I’ve found even with 2GB of RAM, 55% gives about the best performance.
Hope this helps.
Chris.
I don’t think Photoshop does much with the files holding your open images. All the relevant data is contained in the scratch file, so there shouldn’t be any reason to access the source file at all, until you save, and once the save is done, there will again no need to access the source file. I don’t see any likelihood of contention for read/write cycles due to image files being on the same drive or partition as the scratch file, except at the time of opening or saving.
except at the time of opening or saving
My point exactly.
Having honed my system, I am one of the lucky users who’s Photoshop performs like a dream, despite the face I regularly work on pretty big files. My only complaint was the disproportionately long time taken to save large layered files.
You have to consider the way Photoshop holds various elements of the file in scratch – and it has to read this information from the scratch file whilst writing to disk during the save operation.
Moving my "work in progress" files away from the volume containing the scratch disk certainly speeded up the process by eliminating this read/write conflict.
Chris.
Is it okay if Photoshop CS2 is installed on the scratch disk? Or should it run from a different disk? Anyone know?
Photoshop should be installed in the default installation directory on C:
The whole point of having the scratch disk on a separate drive is so the scratch files can be read/written without any conflict with any other read/write operations.
