Optimal hard drive configuration for Photoshop

[robin_odland]

I just purchased a new computer with a 320gb RAID 0 drive, and a

250mb non-RAID drive. I was thinking of partitioning the RAID into

two volumes, and running Photoshop in one (the same directory as the

OS), and running the scratch space for Photoshop in an other. I was

also then planning to store photos on the non RAID drive.

 

Does this make sense to everyone? Or is there a more optimal

configuration.

 

Thanks,

 

Robin

[dglickstein]

Optimal is separate drives for scratch and data. For improved speed, purchase drives that are 15,000RPM or 10,000RPM.

 

Yes, it makes sense.

 

dG

[scott_eaton]

You're better off not using RAID, or having some redundancy with RAID 1 and splitting your volumes physically. The Benefits of RAID 0 with a typical onboard IDE controller is minimal at best, and only increases chances of data loss.

[dave_nelson___atlanta__ga]

<p>If it is a new computer with SATA, or SATA II (I/O) drives then the RAID 0 is worthless in my experience. You are better off setting them up as two (assuming it is 2 160GB drives) seperate drives and use one for the OS and the other for all temp files, page files, and scratch disk.

 

<p>Partitioning a single drive into multiple logical drives will just slow things down and cause major headaches if any corruption occurs. Having seperate physical drives that are on seperate controllers gives the best performance and keeps things simple if any drive fails.

 

<p>With my new machine using the Hitachi SATA II hard drives and the latest Asus motherboard Raid 0 gave no noticable real-world benefits over having two seperate drives with the HUGE negative of doubling the chance of a catastrophic failure. I was really disappointed by that discovery, I have always wanted to have a Raid 0 configuration, but with the speed of todays systems it is useless.

 

<p>Raid 1 or 5 on the data drive could come in real handy though.

 

<p>Here is a good article that focuses on gaming, but relates to any type of computer use, on Raid 0. <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2101" target="_blank"><u>http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2101</u></a>

[big toys are better]

A RAID 1+0 system if available makes good use of two matched drives, and the faster and bigger the better. I don't know if such controller cards are now available for SATA drives but if not now probably soon.

 

RAID 5 is the Cat's Meow for big and fast data storage, but requires a high end SCSI controller card and is best implemented with four or more SCSI drives (preferably hot-swapable 80 pin SCA units), so it is bulky and quite expensive. You also need to know what you are doing since the whole idea is to have redundancy and recoverability, meaning you also need extra drives to replace any dead or dying units, and must do that replacement in a timely fashion.

 

You could also set up a separate "server" computer to store you files. If running Linux or BSD Unix you can use "cron" to automatically back up your files, perhaps to a different server. You could at minimum do this same thing manually with any computer-- either dumping to a different drive (I like to use an external drive that is only turned on for the dump or upload), or again to a separate data server than also can be off except when transferring files. This is actually a good use for an older computer that has been refreshed with a new drive, something a lot of Linux fans like to do.

[yann_r.]

To all : Very interesting forum! Could I request some help from you here?<p>

I own a prehistoric computer with 2 hard drives : a 40GB and a little 4GB.<br>

I put OS + saved work space on the largest one and PS software on the other, am I right?

[micheleberti]

I would buy three more HDs and make a RAID 5 :-)