Hard disk configuration for PSCS4

<p>When running PS I believe it is generally recommended that one use two physical hard disks; one for the operating system, its page file and applications. A separate hard disk is used for the PS swap file. </p>

<p>Is it possible to employ this scheme if the two hard drives are set up in a Raid 0 configuration? If this is not possible, which configuration would provide the better option in terms of speed?</p>

<p>TIA to the computer gurus.</p>

<p>Raid 0 is pretty fast all by itself. It has no redundancy however, so if one fails you loose all your data. I don't think there is any way to do it without adding another drive.</p>

<p>One disk for OS and program files, One mirrored pair for PS4 and LR2 files and a WD Raptorveloc for the PS swap file only.</p>

<p>I think Jim is right. Raid 0 alone is pretty risky - doubles your risk of losing all data, only one of the two disks has to fail and it's all gone. I use 2 disks, set up for both Raid 1 and Raid 0 - my valuable data is mirrored over the two disks using Raid 1, and a section of both disks is used for Raid 0 (striping, where the data is split between the two, and so can be read and written faster). I have my PS swap files on the Raid 0 portion, not sure it is significantly faster though.</p>

<p>If i was setting up a PC today I would use 3 disks, one pair in RAID 1, and one fast disk for swap files.</p>

<p>I run a pair of hdd's in RAID O for the OS and applications. I run a second pair of hdd's in RAID O for PS scratch and LR library.</p>

<p>In my opinion, RAID O is half as reliable as one hdd. Most risk a lot on one single hdd yet think two RAIDed is a bad idea? I don't get it. How often do we hear of hdd troubles these days? They are few and far between. I've had no hdd issues in 13 years of computing but keep a few simple rules. I use new hdd's every three years and back up your system with Ghost or Acronis just incase something happens. Ghost has rescued me from my own silly mistakes a few times. Nice to have a brand new system restore in 20 min.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I believe the issue traditionally with Photoshop is not so much program and swap file, but conflicts between accessing OS swap file and PS swap file. Keeping those in different locations speeds up the program, reduces conflicts and makes the system more stable.<br>

If I were to mod my system (read if I could afford it) for high performance, a 15k SCSI would be mounted to run as a swap disk only. But 10k drives run well, and surprisingly some 7200 rpm disks with decent cache do well. Hopefully, you're not looking at a system running the slower 5400 rpm drives.</p>

<p>Many many thanks to all of you who took the time to respond. I appreciate the suggestions of those who propose a totally different approach but I still need a definitive (if possible) answer to the original question. Let me rephrase it:</p>

<p>I have two (no more, no less) hard disk drives, both 7200 rpm. </p>

<p>Option 1: I can put my O/S, page file & applications on one and the PS swap file on the other.</p>

<p>Option 2: I can configure the 2 drives as Raid 0.</p>

<p>Which option would you choose to obtain the best performance from PSCS4?</p>

<p>Personally, I would go number 2, assuming you have backups of everything and you don't mind rebuilding your system from scratch if a drive fails. Are you storing your images externally, or in a seperate raid 1?</p>

<p>If you can, set up the raid 0, then when that is set up, make a ghost of the completed setup. That should help you in case of drive failure.</p>

<p>Peter, why, if using three disks, would you use raid 1? I would reccomend raid 5 or 6. Speed + redundancy. Just don't use 1tb or larger drives as they seem to have errors on the rewrite.</p>

<p>I use option 1 and have for years. Not that I'm a model of efficiency, but it works well and is stable.<br>

Although I have OS and PS swap file on C: and PS and OS swap file on E: with data storage on F:.</p>

<p>Option 2.</p>

<p>also, if you have plenty of ram and have CS4 running on a 64 bit Windows OS, you'll use ram before heavy swap or scratch.</p>

<p>Hi - Has anyone tried a flash drive in Readyboost? I believe that it moves the pagefile to the flash unit. Anyone see any boost with that? <br>

thankx</p>

<p>For the lurkers, and potential system builders, I offer what I consider the BEST solution at this time. I have implemented all but the RAID part of this...<br>

Your OS and PS run on an Intel X25-M SSD (solid-state drive). These drives make everything SNAP on-screen. The difference is startling, and makes overclocking look slow by comparison. (The Intels benchmark best, and suffer from much less degradation than other mfr's, at least as of this writing).<br>

Your swap files (OS, PS, and ACR) run on -another- SSD. This might not provide perceptible speed increases, because SSD's excel at serving multiple requests - because there's no wait for the head to reposition and the disk to spin to a new cluster. I couldn't determine which option was best, so went with 2 SSD's in my system.<br>

Image files reside on fast HD's, which excel over SSD's in exactly one area - large-file sequential writes. Well-ok-they also are MUCH cheaper than SSD's for large drives. Use RAID to increase thruput even more.<br>

For those wishing to learn more, I suggest AnandTech's excellent reviews/articles, and the OCZForum for highly-technical setup guides.</p>

 

<p>$220 for 64gb all the while ssd's are still in thier infancy? No thanks, I don't think they are there yet. Well, they are. It's just software, hardware and operating systems, are not. Then there's degradation over time...<br>

Lurk or ask on the overclocklers forum<br>

<a href="http://www.ocforums.com/forumdisplay.php?s=bc8a2e117ef26ec4c63d6c81d26ea1f7&f=69">http://www.ocforums.com/forumdisplay.php?s=bc8a2e117ef26ec4c63d6c81d26ea1f7&f=69</a></p>

<p>SSD's are great for quick boot but that's about it in terms of a Photoshop computer.<br>

Sata3 is just around the corner in spring 2010 too so new mobo's will be supporting that. If i budgeted $220 for the fastest drive, I'd buy 4 X WD 640 hdd's and RAID O those for a very fast stripe! 2.4 TB of storage for a couple partitions is nice too. Or two Velociraptors in RAID O if space in the box is a concern.</p>