New PC Drive Configuration

ah5168

ah5168

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I am just in the process of building a new PC and was wondering about the best location for the software. I will have a 1Tb HDD and a 120 Gb SSB and 16 Gb of RAM.

With my old PC I copy the images onto the main HDD to work on them and then back up to external HDD's. I would like to get the best performance out of Adobe Bridge when importing and previewing the the images.

Is it best to put Photoshop on the HDD along with windows and use the SSD as a scratch disc or would it be best to put Photoshop on the SSD and would the introduction of another HDD for the data speed things up.

I don't want to put Windows on the SSD as I am still a bit worried about the reliability of SSD's and I am not worried about start up times as long as its less than the time it takes to make a cup of coffee first thing in the morning.
 
id use the SSD for OS and programs (reliability is fine, been running them fault free for years) with the scratch on the SSD also (you have 16gb, assuming you have CS4 or greater itll take large edits to run out of RAM and start scratching so shouldn't be an issue).
 
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I think I have read that its better to have the scratch on a different disc to Photoshop and I don't really much of a problem in Photoshop with my existing 4 Gb of RAM, the main things I am trying to improve are importing to Bridge and HDR rendering. I know the HDR rendering is mainly down to processor speed and have gone for a an over clocked i5 to help this but I am still working on the best way to improve the Bridge import.
 
ah5168 said:
I think I have read that its better to have the scratch on a different disc to Photoshop
Click to expand...

This only really applies to slow HDDs.

The best set up would be as Neil said, OS and photoshop on SSD and use it as a scratch disk (which, again as Neil said, wouldn't be used that much with 16GB of RAM unless handling a large amount of files at a time). This will give you the best performance all round.
 
I'm on my mobile at the moment, but have a look for threads I've started. There's one on my experience s there...
 
For optimum speed you want Windows, PS, all scratch disks etc., all on the SSD. This is the way I've been working for the past several years. Yes, SSDs will fail - but they're no more likely to fail than HDDs - either way you need a proper backup strategy for when (not if) your main drive fails.

As for having scratch disks on separate hardware - yes that used to make a difference when using HDDs with access times in the thousands of microseconds. With an SSD the PC can find the data and grab it from the drive before an HDD even knew where to look for it.
 
hollis_f said:
For optimum speed you want Windows, PS, all scratch disks etc., all on the SSD. This is the way I've been working for the past several years. Yes, SSDs will fail - but they're no more likely to fail than HDDs - either way you need a proper backup strategy for when (not if) your main drive fails.

As for having scratch disks on separate hardware - yes that used to make a difference when using HDDs with access times in the thousands of microseconds. With an SSD the PC can find the data and grab it from the drive before an HDD even knew where to look for it.
Click to expand...

I concur with this comment, and indeed everyone else who has said to put the OS etc on the SSD.

Likewise, there is no need for a scratch disk since the SSD is so fast.
 
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