Scratch disks?

M

Maccas

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Name
Ian
Edit My Images
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Hi

Im after a new desktop pc and am getting confused as what to get.
I will be using photoshop/lightroom only lightly not a heavy user only 1 monitor for now anyway.
What specs do you have? will I need a scratch disk? what is Raid?
Would a 128gb SSD be ok for OS and photoshop/lightroom or would I be better with 256gb?
I would appreciate any help.

Cheers Ian
 
think best is to start from your budget :)

do you need just a case (i guess you have monitor, keyboard etc already)?
 
Maccas said:
will I need a scratch disk?
Click to expand...
Memory hungry applications working on large files, like tiff
or others, will save given operations in files for temporary
storage on what you will define as scratch disk so to free
RAM space and availability.
Maccas said:
what is Raid?
Click to expand...
RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Drives and
is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple
physical disk drive components into a single logical unit for the
purposes of data redundancy, performance improvement, or both.
… a backup system.
Maccas said:
Would a 128gb SSD be ok for OS and photoshop/lightroom or would I be better with 256gb?
Click to expand...
As long as you don't store your images on the OS drive, 128GB
will be more than enough.
 
Budget id like £1000.00 tops,i have monitor and keyboard.
 
adobe photoshop will only scratch when it runs out of RAM, so providing you have a decent chunk of RAM i wouldnt really worry about it other than set it to a SSD.

raid is NOT a backup system. forget about it unless you want to run a large storage array.
 
Thanks Neil
So you think a 256gb SSD and a 2TB HD would be ok?
 
With the price of SSD being fairly cheap now get at least the 256GB or bigger if your budget allows.

Only you know if 2TB HD will be enough, how much have used on your current system?

Just make sure you get as much system RAM as you can afford say min 16GB or preferable 32GB.
 
I'm sure 16gb ram will be enough.
If you were buying a new pc now would you go for 3 hard drives and use one specially for editing?
 
Maccas said:
I'm sure 16gb ram will be enough.
If you were buying a new pc now would you go for 3 hard drives and use one specially for editing?
Click to expand...

If you mean to keep the files ie Photos and Video seperate from the OS and programs then yes definitely.

Not sure why you'd want 3 Hard Drives, if 3 was the magic number I'd have 2 SSD and 1 HDD which is what I had in my last PC before moving to Macs for editing (unless you were thinking of using 2 HDD in Raid 1)

Honestly though if you're just a light photoshop/lightroom user then you're overthinking it, a good sized SSD and HDD will be fine... just make sure you have a good backup system in place.
 
Archie747 said:
Is 16gb really necessary? A lot of systems with 8gb or less work well.
Click to expand...

Yes yes and yes.

Well 'necessary' maybe not but a definate advantage yes. If you're working in photoshop with large files/layers that 8GB will get used very quickly and soon you'll be relying on that scratch disk the OP mentioned... and if you want to do Video thats even more demanding on RAM with 16GB recommended by Adobe for Premiere (I would list that as the min). Again with prices the way they are I wouldn't consider buying a PC with 8GB.
 
So if I buy a new PC to replace my 5/6 year old 4gb 2.9 ghz I will notice a substantial improvement? (Somewhat tongue in cheek)
 
My setup for photos and videos is an i7 with a 500GB SSD partitioned so as to give me 350GB as a scratchpad where I can edit photos etc and 16GB RAM.

I also have a number of HDDs as permanent backups and a 2TB HDD in a USB3 caddy permanently connected through a switch so it can easily be turned on when I need it.

That is there to quickly load in projects I have previously been working on and keep the scratchpad fairly clear.

In use it works very well.
.
 
Maccas said:
Hi

Im after a new desktop pc and am getting confused as what to get.
I will be using photoshop/lightroom only lightly not a heavy user only 1 monitor for now anyway.
What specs do you have? will I need a scratch disk? what is Raid?
Would a 128gb SSD be ok for OS and photoshop/lightroom or would I be better with 256gb?
I would appreciate any help.

Cheers Ian
Click to expand...

You need a disk for the operating system (ie: Windows), application software (ie Photoshop), and user data (ie: Your own files). You need a disk, be it a HDD or a SSD, be it 128GB or 256GB or whatever size you like, for your juicy and chilling novel (your own user data) that you typed up using a word processor (application software) on your Windows (operating system) computer.

There's no such thing as needing a "scratch disk", it's not like you have to say "I want a new computer, so I need CPU, RAM, HDD, and oh, one of those scratch disks will do nicely" because the "disk" in scratch disk is really the same disk as the HDD or SDD you want, it is the same disk as the 128GB or 256GB you want.

It is just a technical name for how a software work. When the memory is full, the software will just put the work back on the HDD/SDD until needed, and swap it around every time you needed to do work on that piece of data.

Put it this way: It is a bit like, you are working with so much paperwork in your office, your desk (RAM) gets so full so you decided to put some of the papers you are not working on at the moment, on the floor (HDD/SDD) while you work on the other papers. When you needed "that other paperwork", you in theory, put the papers you are now not working on, from the desk (RAM) to the floor (HDD), and take the other papers from the floor, put them on the desk to work with.

Scratch, adjective, meaning "put together from whatever is available", as in for example: United is putting together a scratch team for the semi-finals. Hence if the memory gets full, the Photoshop image you are working on, would use both the RAM and the HDD, usually swapping parts of the file from RAM to "whatever is available", in which case the HDD/SDD is available.
 
Major Eazy said:
You need a disk for the operating system (ie: Windows), application software (ie Photoshop), and user data (ie: Your own files). You need a disk, be it a HDD or a SSD, be it 128GB or 256GB or whatever size you like, for your juicy and chilling novel (your own user data) that you typed up using a word processor (application software) on your Windows (operating system) computer.

There's no such thing as needing a "scratch disk", it's not like you have to say "I want a new computer, so I need CPU, RAM, HDD, and oh, one of those scratch disks will do nicely" because the "disk" in scratch disk is really the same disk as the HDD or SDD you want, it is the same disk as the 128GB or 256GB you want.

It is just a technical name for how a software work. When the memory is full, the software will just put the work back on the HDD/SDD until needed, and swap it around every time you needed to do work on that piece of data.

Put it this way: It is a bit like, you are working with so much paperwork in your office, your desk (RAM) gets so full so you decided to put some of the papers you are not working on at the moment, on the floor (HDD/SDD) while you work on the other papers. When you needed "that other paperwork", you in theory, put the papers you are now not working on, from the desk (RAM) to the floor (HDD), and take the other papers from the floor, put them on the desk to work with.

Scratch, adjective, meaning "put together from whatever is available", as in for example: United is putting together a scratch team for the semi-finals. Hence if the memory gets full, the Photoshop image you are working on, would use both the RAM and the HDD, usually swapping parts of the file from RAM to "whatever is available", in which case the HDD/SDD is available.
Click to expand...

Great explanation - I've never got what the term meant before..
 
I'd say rather than spending money on a disk to use solely as a scratch disk, spend it on more RAM.

Providing you're going to use a 64bit OS.
 
When I built my own computer i decided to use an SSD drive (c) as the one to start the computer, but also added another internal HDD drive to store my photos in. So now I can go into the second hard drive and pull out any photo be it Jpeg-RAW or TIFF and work on a copy (which you should alwys do) transferred to the SSD drive "C" without cluttering it up with loads of photos. Copy/past from one drive to the other is easy
So main SSD is 256GB and storage Hdd 1 TB which works for me. Also 16gig. of RAM
 
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