Scratchdisc Suggestion :o)

[M.H._F...@adobeforums.com]

Hello all,

This is my first post, and I was hoping someone can help me out. I'm looking to add a seperate internal HD to use as the Photoshop Scratch exclusively. I'am considering the WD Raptor 36GB SATA 16MB 10000RPM.

My question is: Size-wise, will 36GB be enough?

I'm on a budget. I can almost get 2 x 160GB SATA 7200 for the price of the 1 x Raptor 36GB, so I really want to be sure I'm doing the rigth thing and aiming for speed.

My Set-Up would then be:
Internal 1: 320 GB 7200 (main drive / programs & system installations)
Internal 2: 36 GB Rapter (photoshop scratchdisc exclusive)
External 1: 500 GB Mybook (all documents)

Ideas suggestions are much welcome!

Sincerely
M.H. Frandsen

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

36 GB is on the smallish side, but for most normal file sizes it should do just fine. The speed is great. Just make sure you set a secondary scratch disk just in case.

Personally, I'd go for two 7200 drives as RAID 0, which would probably be just as fast, if not faster. But it depends on the RAID controller. Some on-board controllers aren't all that good, and a dedicated PCI-e RAID card will cost you about the same as the raptor.

[M.H._F...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the reply. So if I went with the Raptor as my Primary and my main 320 GB as my secondary that would be good? (my main 320GB has about 180 GB free-space and I have all the app's I need installed).

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

That should work fine. If the scratch file does overflow you'll notice a speed bump of course, but as long as the disk is well maintained and defragmented you'll go clear of the dreaded "out of memory" message.

But like I said, if you work on reasonably normal file sizes, 36 GB should be enough.

[PECour...@adobeforums.com]

My question would be to know if any test was done with SSDs as scratch disks...

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

I'm waiting for that, too. By all reports I've seen so far, there's no significant speed advantage with SSDs yet. But it's only a matter of time.

[M.H._F...@adobeforums.com]

I'm really unsure whether to invest in a whole new PC or invest in these upgrades for my current HP AMD 64 X2 3800+ / 4GB RAM.

Basically I'm aiming at optimizing my PC to (almost) exclusively run the Adobe App's really smooth...(mostly Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign!)

_______________________

For the upgrades I would get:

- Raptor 150 GB HD 16MB Cache as Scratch.

- Change my Graphics Card to Geforce 9400GT. From what I can understand, it would go well with the new Adobe CS4 engine.

- I'm also looking at investing in Vista 64 Bit, im currently running XP 32bit.
_______________________

So what do you think? A whole new PC or these upgrades...Any insight would be very much appreciated!

- Mikkel

[John Joslin]

there's no significant speed advantage with SSDs yet

<http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/233001/intel-x25m.html?searchString=ssd>

[Ho]

My question would be to know if any test was done with SSDs as scratch
disks...

Exactly. Most, if not all, of the tests I've seen report things like boot times or time for Photoshop to load. Obviously these tests aren't designed by anyone who actually uses Photoshop, or the Scratch test would be near the top of the list.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

The very highest end SSDs show some speed benefit. But they are more expensive than a RAID setup of cheap disks.

[Bart_...@adobeforums.com]

RAID: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

Tell that to the guys who insist you need 15k RPM drives for a decent RAID array...

[Bart_...@adobeforums.com]

I still use JBOD.

There is so much more to the equation than just spindle speed and I am sure you are already aware of that.