Raid/ Scratch disc setup

[jim_karthauser]

Hi there again

Following on from this thread http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?

msg_id=00PkZQ

 

Is there any need to have a scratch disc for cs3 when using 2 250gb drives in raid

0 setup?

If so, What size/ speed? Any recommendations?

 

Cheers

[rnt]

I'm not sure what you mean... I think you're pretty much required to have a scratch disk/file defined (PS3 just creates a scratch file on the disk, it doesn't use the whole drive). It -can- be the RAID0 drive, and it'll be a bit faster than a single drive set up.

[mtwhite]

<p>Regarding the RAID0 setup; if you haven't already, it's worth reading <A

href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_0#RAID_0">this</a> thoroughly before

committing to it. If you really, really want to go that route, it would be wise

to have a backup strategy.

<p><A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_1#RAID_1">RAID1</a> is better in

almost every way. Write speeds would be the same as a

single disk, but read speeds are almost twice as fast because the same data can

be read from two drives at once, and you'd have redundancy when one of them fails.

[garrison_k.]

"Is there any need to have a scratch disc for cs3 when using 2 250gb drives in raid 0 setup?"

 

TIt is best to have a separate hard disc for scratch. It doesn't have to be raid configured.

 

 

"If so, What size/ speed? Any recommendations?"

 

It's impossible to advice without knowing what your system is.

[jim_karthauser]

Hi Guys

 

Thanks for your answers

 

The setup I intend to use is outlined in my last post (linked)

 

basically I have been advised by a very good friend of mine to run the OS etc on RAID0 (2 x 250gb) I will backup everything regularly to DVD + external 500gb drive.

 

I'm wondering if there is any need/ benefit in getting, say, another 100gb drive or something to use solely as a scratch for CS3..

 

Hmm. Any advice is great.

 

Cheers

[jim_karthauser]

Matthew,

In that case, I guess it's just as easy to have 2 x 500gbs in RAID1 as 2 x 250gbs in RAID0?

Would I need a raid controller on the board that I intend to use?

Cheers

[mtwhite]

Looking at your previous post, the motherboard you've chosen likely needs a

driver running in Vista to activate the on-board RAID. It should be easy to

install, assuming the driver is Vista SP1 compatible. It would be on the

motherboard's driver CD.

 

It's easy to spend other peoples' money :) , but harddrives are relatively cheap

these days, and only getting cheaper. It's easy to find fast and reliable 500GB

drives for under $100. RAID1 is a serious step up in terms of safety.

 

A full-scale hardware RAID controller is probably overkill, unless you're doing

HD movie production for a living, or building a server to host a really big

website. I'm as much of a computer geek as anyone, and even I don't bother with one.

[hugh_stevens1]

Jim

 

Just took a 'A.B.C.'s of Photoshop CS3' course at the Texas School of Professional Photography. The Instructors were John Wilson and Dan McDonald. John has two studios in FT. Worth, and Dan is an Adobe Certified Expert, aka A.C.E.

 

In short both advocate 3 hardrives in any given box running PS. One drive has the code, the second has the images, and the third is a scratch disk for photoshop 'swap space' for lack of a better term. John illustrated for us during one particular exercide where PS CS3 had written 5 gig of info to the 'scratch disk'. The scratch disk does not need to be large. I beleive they said a 25 gig would be more than enough. PS has a limitation on just how much swap it can write. Use the configuration portion of PS3 to allocate memeory a designate which drive does what.

 

I'll tie this into another issue. I own a HP laptop, which has a routine to use a jump-drive to augment the on-board RAM. I'm wondering if I can just place a 8 gig jump drive into the USB port and use that as scratch for PS CS3. Hope this helps - Hugh