Best 2 Drive Setup

<p>I am trying to optimize CS4 on my desktop. I'm upgrading it to i7 at the moment which involves reinstalling the operating systems (Windows 7 and Snow Leopard). I think it would be a good idea to shuffle around the SATA-300 hard drives I have in the machine. I'm thinking of using the following setup:</p>

<p>1 =WD 1001FALS (1TB, 7200rpm, 32MB cache); approx. 12ms access time, 90 MB/s avg read speed.<br>

This faster drive will hold all OS and program files + the Windows pagefile. Also will have a large partition for primary image storage.</p>

<p>2 = Hitachi Deskstart P7K500 (500GB, 7200rpm, 16MB cache); approx. 19ms access time, 80MB/s avg read speed.<br>

This one will be hooked up externally to eSATA. To be used as CS4 scratch disk drive, with a scratch partition at the front of the drive. Also to have a large storage partition at end of drive for backup and data transfer between computers.</p>

<p>Does this make sense? Is this the optimal use with my hardware?<br>

(I'm not going RAID yet, but frequent backups to drive 2 should suffice for now).</p>

<p>Not to me. Personally, I would use the 500GB for the OS's and Apps and the 1TB for all the media. I highly doubt you will notice any real world difference between the two drives. However, keeping all your media on a 2nd drive (not the boot drive) will have a positive impact. And I wouldn't partition a drive. As far as a CS scratch disk goes- you don't say how much Ram you have and whether you have a tower? PS will use Ram as scratch first, so the more you have the better off you are. And just to confirm, a Raid 1 (mirrored) is NOT a back up solution. It simply protects you against one hard drive failing. Nothing else.</p>

<p>Good call, but I'd flip/flop the two drives. 500GB for OS/Programs, 1TB for scratch and primary image storage.</p>

<p>The WD will do better for scratch and image storage. Higher density data on the 1TB drive will result in faster data transfer off that first part of the drive partition. I agree with your plan to partition off the first part of the drive for CS4 scratch, avoids fragmentation issues and keeps the scratch disk on the fastest part of the drive. The speed of scratch disk is more important than the speed of the OS drive, IMHO.</p>

<p>The main thing I'm wondering is what generally should go on your fastest drive - scratch disk VS OS/Photoshop/pagefile. Is there consensus on this?</p>

<p>I don't think you're really going to notice much difference.. but yea your setup makes sense.</p>

<p>If you ever want to upgrade to ridiculous boot times, get a SSD as a main drive for holding programs only. Don't store data there as write times tend to be slower, and don't use it as a scratch disk for photoshop.. but the read times are nuts and opening programs and booting goes crazy quick.</p>

<p>Kyle</p>