Optimize PS CS on new SATA drive w/XP Pro

[jmconner]

I am member who first started playing around with PS CS a little over a year

ago. Still a long way to go, but I am serious about learning PS. The problems

have recently been computer related issues which are more aggravating than the

steep learning curve of the software. I have read many threads/articles

(including this site) and a very helpful ?knowledge base? from adobe

(http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/318243.html) about optimizing Windows XP

for PS CS but it seems to be different for each individual. There are also

contradictions which makes this somewhat confusing, so?, Here is my

situation.

 

Hardware:

Dell 400SC computer with Intel 875 chipset

P IV 3.2 Ghz dual processor w/ 800Mhz FSB

2GB RAM installed (upgradeable to 4GB)

Matrox millenium P750 AGP video card running

Dual monitors

 

I am now shooting RAW files with a 12.8 mp Canon EOS 5D and have scanned a lot

of old negative film. Many files (scanned) are 200MB plus. CS runs very slow

while working on these files and sometimes shuts down. In addition to an

existing 40GB EIDE hard drive that I have formatted and reinstalled XP Pro, I

plan to install only XP pro and PS CS with minimum apps and services on a new

WD Caviar 500GB SATA 7200RPM drive with 16MB cache/300MB/s. Again, I intend

that this newly added hard drive will be a bootable hd for image processing

only. I have read mucho about separate partitions for XP, PS, scratch disk,

data, etc..., but have also read another MAC article

(http://homepage.mac.com/boots911/.Public/PhotoshopAccelerationBasics2.3.pdf )

which suggests that if operating from one physical hard drive, that one should

leave that disk unpartitioned and let PS decide where the scratch disk info

should go. I have two slower EIDE drives installed and external (firewire and

USB 2.0) drives that I could utilize as well. I would like to get this as

right as I can this time so I can get back to work soon. Any advice will be

appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Joseph<div></div>

[steve_bingham]

With YOUR setup I would put your PS CS scratch on your fastest hard drive - unpartitioned and dedicated to scratch.

[jeffreyc]

It's not much of a performance boost but if the SATA Controller card (and your budget) supports it, I'd recommend adding a second 500GB Caviar and having them set the controller to mirror (RAID 1) the drives. The bad news is it doubles your cost per GB but if one of the drives dies you have a fallover. It still helps to have off PC and off site backups but rebuilding is a pain especially after you get your set up right where you want it.

 

I hope this helps.

[jmconner]

Thanks Jeff. I am stretched pretty thin right now and just need to get back to working some files i have promised. I'm trying to concentrate on existing hardware now. I'm sure that later I'll want to go to a RAID setup but I'm not ready for that now. I just back up with external HD and DVDs.

 

Steve,,, That would be XP, XP swap file, PS CS and CS scratch disk on one unpartitioned HD? I've read that you don't want windows swap file competing with PS scratch disk, but if the HD is large enough, would it mattter?

[chris_leck]

Joseph, it sound like you have a nice system. I'm not really clear on your present and future hard drive configs. I wouldn't suggest using the external drives for anything but archival storage, they're going to be too slow. I also would avoid partitions as they usually add needless complexity. If you want to speed things up, add a spindle, not a partition.

 

Here's what I did, and it seems to work fine:

 

- Raptor for OS and applications

 

- Raptor for swapfile and PS scratch

 

- RAID5 for image files

 

The bottleneck for me may be the RAID5 write times, which can be a little slow when files are smaller than a full stripe (or so I'm told). PS CS2 boots in about 6 sec. though.

[jeffreyc]

I know the feeling. It took me a while to get to that point myself. The externals should do well as a backup while you're working.

[chiswick_john]

My advice would be to upgrade to CS2 and XP64 and put another 2G of RAM in there. The less you have to rely on a scratch disk the better. Failing that just make sure you do not have the XP page file on the same phsical disk as the Photoshop scratch disk - that is the biggest no-no. HD speed for a scratch disk is not relevant in practical terms unless you have a very expensive SCSI Raid.

[chris_leck]

Why is it a problem to have the pagefile and PS scratch area on the same spindle? I've been doing this and if it's an issue, I'd like to understand and correct it. I have a 74GB Raptor for swap and scratch. The only things on it are a fixed-size pagefile and PS scratch area. I wasn't aware that the two would compete -- when I edit images, that's about all I'm doing (I'm aware that there are ~50 background processes, but they really don't hit the disks).

[jmconner]

I appreciate the help /support. What I've been doing for most of the weekend is installed the new 500GB SATA drive and made three partitions. The first was 100GB with OS, Photoshop CS, Windows swap file (4069 Max) and minimum apps. The second partition is 120GB and as of now is being used solely for scratch disk. The third is 256GB and is unused at this point. Images that I will work with will be copied to the third partition, stored externally and deleted.

 

It is definitely better now, but when I tried to "save to web" (with a 4 window preview) a 243MB tiff file it froze up. Oh yeah, and I think I've lost thousands of keywords during the reinstallation of CS.

So, thanks again for the help. It seems like I will ultimately have to give up more money fro the RAID config, but hopefully this will get me thru for a while.