Scratch disk hard drive?

I just bought a new computer (PC) just for post processing and I understand a 10 gig scratch disk helps the speed when using PS3. The rest of the stuff is pretty fast.

Does anyone have experiance with one? Any advice?

Well, a 10GB hard disk in this day and age is virtually impossible to find, and if you did find one it would be very slow.

Often a partition is created on a larger drive to dedicated to a scratch disk, though not as fast as a dedicated drive, it is still faster than having the scratch files written to the same partition as your data or OS as fragmenting is avoided.

For a dedicated scratch drive, the best options are;

1: The super fast 10K RPM Raptors,.
nternal SATA drives. The smallest is 36GB but it is still very fast. The 74 GB costs a bit more, and gives a lot more room and is also actually a good deal faster.

2: A 10K or 15K SCSI drive
from 36gb and up, very fast but super pricey

3: A Solid State Ram Drive.
(notes read like #2 , more pricey and smaller capacity and so fast it's funny)

I use a Raptor 150gb as my scratch and CS3 seems to move along quite nicely.

Will it make a big difference in speed?
System consists of: Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 3 gig ram & GeForce 8500 card.

I have 20 gig scratch disk on my photoshop computer. I have never really tested to see if it helps at all.

I use a seperate hard drive for a scratch disk on my edit PC and it helps alot but that PC is a bit 'dated'

Here's my ideal photoshop machine setup (windows):
- One disk for the operating system and program files
- One drive for photos and data
- One drive for windows swap
- One drive for photoshop swap

It might be overkill, but if you work with massive files it might help. You could probably combine the last two disks into one. Get a disk with perpendicular recording, like the new Seagate 7200RPM ones, higher density recording means higher data rates without having to have 10K drives.

I have three hard drives, I can't remember how things are set up, but it's generally CPU limited not disk limited for the tasks I do.

This may be a dumb question but do you think any of the new super fast CF cards could be used for scratch disk. Put an 8 Gig card in the desktops build in reader and tell PS to use that for the scratch drive?

tim wrote in post #4646843
Here's my ideal photoshop machine setup (windows):
- One disk for the operating system and program files
- One drive for photos and data
- One drive for windows swap
- One drive for photoshop swap

That pretty much sums up my setup.

Headcase650 wrote in post #4646912
This may be a dumb question but do you think any of the new super fast CF cards could be used for scratch disk. Put an 8 Gig card in the desktops build in reader and tell PS to use that for the scratch drive?

They may be approaching hard drive speeds (at least fast ones) now.
the first Flash Memeory based Solid State drive that was beating out the Raptors in a speed test was only released a few months back (flash memory is not nearly as fast as RAM in your PC, and most of it is not even as fast as a good hard drive)

But that gap is closing.. and random access is always faster even in slower Flash memory...

Give it 6 months and I bet some of the fastest CF cards will be there..
I if I recall correctly there is a SATA to CF card adapter out there to do just this sort of task.

Tsmith wrote in post #4647227
That pretty much sums up my setup.

My setup:
One pair of 400GB drives in RAID 1
OS and Apps on one partition, mundane Data (music, dowlaoded movies etc) on another partition.

One 74GB Raptor
Windows Swap File, and second OS install for Dual booting to another OS.

Four 500GB Drives in RAID 0+1
Critical Data. 1 terabyte of mirrored storage for Photos Only. Nothing else.

One 3.5GB System Memory RAM Drive
PSCS Scratch Disk 1

One 4GB GigaByte I-Ram Solid State drive
PSCS Scratch disk 2

Yes, those last two are only 3.5 and 4 GB

Tapeman wrote in post #4646164
Will it make a big difference in speed?
System consists of: Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 3 gig ram & GeForce 8500 card.

As always, it depends. Dedicated scratch disks are useful when you do not have enough system memory to handle the requirements of the software.

How much memory do you have dedicated to PS? The more memory you have dedicated to PS, the less times the software will need to access scratch disks, provided you're not robbing the OS of its requirements. With 3GB of RAM, you should easily be able to dedicate 1.5 GB to PS, maybe as much as 2GB, again depending.

How big are the files you are editing? If all you are ever editing is single 8x10's w/ 4 layers, you'll never need a scratch disk.

What are your history settings in PS? If you have them set to more than the default 20 with a large image with multiple layers, you may need a scratch disk.

How much software are you running the same time PS is on? If you have a dozen or more programs running at the same time as PS, they will all be competing for system resources, including (but not limited to) memory.

You're not running a Mac, are you? Mac's have a utility called Activity Monitor that, among other things, tracks page ins/outs. Outs measures the number of times physical memory has been unable to accommodate the software requirements & has had to access a hard drive (the scratch disk) to exchange files. There might be something on the PC side, don't know what it would be. If you consistently have a large number of outs, it's a good indicator that you may need more system memory, as that will always be much faster than a scratch disk.

We currently have 5 GB of RAM (3 GB for PS) & a dedicated 74GB Raptor as a scratch disk. It does get used when we're working with large images with multiple layers and many smaller images open at the same time. We typically have 8-10 pieces of software running at the same time, too.

This machine will be almost exclusivly for photo processing. Presently there are two programs on it: Lightroom and PS3. I haven't even loaded any pics.

I looked at a 150gb raptor today, ($209. at Best Buy) thinking that I may put my OS & CS3 & Lightroom on it and partition off some of the 500g main hard drive for a scratch disk.

I am moving slowly because I'm in over my head and want to configure everything before loading it down with files & programs. Hopefully I can get all the hardware this week and download this week-end. (Between football games.)

Where are you going to put your images? On the other partition of the 500GB that's not scratch? Or on a dedicated drive?

Does a built in card reader thats connected to your motherboard offer faster speeds than an external card reader via USB2?