Benefits of a Dedicated Scratch drive

I have been having very good luck running Premeire Pro CS5.5 on my Dell XPS Studio (8 gig of ram) with one 2TB drive in it but running most of the jobs off of my 8TB Netgear RAID box. I am thinking about putting another 2TB drive inside the computer and use it as a scratch drive only. Will that improve anything in the performance? The only issue I have now is some slowing when I drop 30 minutes or more of video on a timeline. That is not a big deal but I'd like to have a better idea about if a dedicated scratch drive will step performance or reliability up in any way.

I can confirm a nice, fast drive (I used a 2TB WD Cavier Black 7200 RPM drive as my scratch and media cache drive) yields noticeable improvement over those files residing on the system drive or the project drive.
When I RAIDED my project drive, however, the improvement was not so noticeable. I can say that there was more fluctuation in performance putting all on the one RAIDed drive, though. (ie, Renders showed more consistent high CPU utilization, but utilization tended to dip up and down more).

Similar Messages

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    Looking to buy a new MacBook Pro which has one PCIe-based 512gb SSD system drive. Unlike earlier MacBook Pro models, there is no internal DVD drive to replace w. a second disk drive.
    I know that with HDD's a dedicated scratch disk that run's at least as fast as your application drive enhances performance of Photoshop. Is this also true with SSD's?  Thanks.

    Here's a suggestion (not aimed at anyone in particular, and I realize it may not be possible in all systems)...
    If you're going to set up a system to access a certain amount of storage interactively - and what I mean is storage that's used all the time in the normal operation of the computer - consider making one big system partition out of a RAID array of SSDs.
    With I/O operations averaging larger than the bare minimum (e.g., 4K bytes), RAID 0 effectively adds together the performance of the drives.  This is because there's effectively no seek time with an SSD.  It essentially randomly accesses stored data by address (it's quite complicated internally, but externally it works out that latency is almost negligible - literally measured as a few millionths of a second on a modern drive).
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    Consider building your next system with multiple SSDs on task, making up an array of, say, a few terabytes.  This yields the following:
    Everything done by the system is done at the speed that's the sum of the drive speeds.  With a modern system using SATA III, that's essentially about half a gigabyte per second per drive.  Imagine throughput of more than a gigabyte a second - that's real.  Forget about dedicating drives to tasks - EVERYTHING gets the benefit of the entire RAID array speed.
    Since latency is virtually nonexistent, a great deal of multitasking can be done on the same volume without introducing any thrashing.  Photoshop can be writing to scratch, the system swapping like crazy, and you just keep working without notice.
    Everything's consolidated on one volume, which simplifies a lot of things (e.g., backup is simpler, applications install where they like on the C: volume).
    All the free space pools together, so what's available as transient storage for whatever you're doing at the time is maximized.  This tends to offset the extra cost of SSDs some.
    SSDs themselves are fairly new tech, and it's not been widely known that they RAID together EXTREMELY well.  They really do.
    People sometimes worry that using multiple drives to make up a single volume increases the chances for failure, but consider that SSDs are solid state, and so by nature have a good bit higher reliability (higher MTBF; often 2 million hours), and they don't generate nearly as much heat (they consume just a few watts).  Having SSDs in your system can actually increase the reliability of everything somewhat, because when everything is cooler it lasts longer.  Plus they don't make any vibration.
    This is not fantasy, I've done it.
    My current Dell workstation has a nearly 2 TB C: volume made up of four 480 GB SSDs.  My sustainable disk throughput is literally around 1.7 gigabytes per second (that's 15 times faster than a typical single hard drive).  I do also have some HDDs in the system, but they normally spend all day spun down.  They're for backup and very low access storage (e.g., downloads I've accumulated over time).
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    Oh, and it's been 100.0% reliable with this setup for 2-1/2 years now.  ZERO glitches.
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  • New computer build -- Photoshop scratch drive options

    It’s been years since I built my last Photoshop computer, so I’m researching what I want to include in my next build.
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    Can anyone with PS scratch-performance knowledge enlighten me on the current state of affairs?
    Thanks,
    --Alan

    It's my opinion that you want to do all you can to keep Photoshop from having to go to the scratch drive, and when it must it's going to be painfully slow no matter what hardware you have.  This is based on the theory that RAM access is orders of magnitude faster than disk (even SSD) and the observation that Photoshop sometimes writes horrendously large datasets to the scratch drive.
    You're doing the right thing, going to 16 GB (24 GB might even be better).  I have 16 GB and for all "normal" work I find Photoshop to be very fast and not go virtual, even after long editing sessions.  In testing, however, I've been able to force Photoshop to go virtual by doing things like:
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    Also keep in mind that a RAID setup effecitvely adds the on-drive RAM caches together, so for example a RAID 0 C: drive, made from 2 RE4 drives each of which sports 64 MB on-drive cache) now delivers 2 x SATA 2 transfer rates with 128 MB on-drive cache.  This, along with enabling of Windows 7's highest throughput caching (which is not on by default) means that drive C: access will always be surprisingly quick.
    FYI, I recently purchased a powerful dual quad core workstation that implements the above on the cheap...   I've described how in these threads.  Depending on your budget, possibly worth considering in lieu of a new build...
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    http://forums.adobe.com/message/3605467#3605467
    -Noel

  • Dedicated scratch not faster than scratch on boot volume

    My Mac Pro boot OS is on a 150 Gb striped raid made from outer partitions on two 1Tb drives in bays 1 and 2. There is 95 Gb free on the boot. 8 Gb RAM.
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    I ran the Retouche artists Photoshop speed test with the scratch on the dedicated separate scratch, and on the boot volume.
    The results were:
    Average time of several runs with dedicated scratch was 45.5 seconds.
    Average time with scratch on boot was 43.9 seconds.
    Since I was expecting the dedicated scratch to be faster I was a bit surprised so I repeated the exercise on my MacBook Pro (1.83 MHz, 2 Gb RAM). Normal scratch is the boot volume which a 5400 rpm 500 Gb Samsung with 150 Gb free, no partitions. For this exercise, I connected an eSATA via an express card to provide a dedicated scratch alternative.
    Average time with dedicated separate scratch was 152 seconds.
    Average time with scratch on boot was also 152 seconds.
    All Retouche Tests were done with 40 history states and 4 cache levels, which results in about 7Gb of scratch being used. On both machines Quickbench shows the scratch as just a few percent faster than the boot.
    I repeated the Mac Pro tests with the test file located on different drives, including the boot and the scratch, but there were no significant differences.
    What has happened to the standard advice about dedicated scratch for Photoshop?
    Any thoughts ? (other than that I have too much time on my hands!)
    Mike

    Important to note the buffer on those drives are the all 32MB or are some 16MB.
    A drive with a 32 MB buffer is going to record data faster.
    However if you are on a MacPro (Intel) which it sounds like you are,
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    I also found partitioning the drive does not seem to be necessary on the intel box?
    I have a test that is fairly consistent regardless as long as you have sufficient RAM 8 GB or more a Raid O scratch and an the same amount of memory allowed.
    I still find with CS 4 that using bigger tiles is helpful as wel as the Forced VM Buffer plug in.
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    My test work on my dual xeon core duo that way in 16-18 seconds ona 8 core MacPro with 2GB of RAM and with out the Raid 0 and using the startup as the scratch with no Raid configured and without the plug ins it takes about 3 minutes.
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  • 64 Bit CS5 Won't run after I unchecked the 'C' Scratch Drive....

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    The root cause is likely a permissions issue.  You need to make sure you have Full Control privileges to the root folder of each of the hard drives you have told Photoshop to use, as well as to the folder identified on your system by the TEMP environment variable.
    Also, you may want to just turn off Windows UAC entirely, though you should research UAC and fully understand what it does and what the additional risks are before making the decision to do this.
    A quick fix for you to get you working again might be to press and hold the Control and Alt keys immediately after starting Photoshop from its icon or menu item.  If you're quick enough, it will pop up a dialog allowing you to re-specify the scratch disks you had before when it worked.
    -Noel

  • Network Drives / FCP Scratch Drive

    Hi
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    Lee

    You can avoid this, I believe, by having separate user logins for each editor...
    Patrick

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  • Best practice question re. importing and scratch drive

    Hello:
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    Yes read your manual to understand more but here is a clip:
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  • How necessary is a separate scratch drive??

    Greetings from cold, windy Humboldt,
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    none yet   Mac OS X (10.4.9)   considering an Intel Macbook Pro 15"

    The system drive has to run the operating system, and FCP as well as any other programs you may have open. If you add to that workload the task of capturing footage, you are pushing that one drive pretty hard.
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  • FCP locks up system after 5 min digitize, fills scratch drive w 1 big file.

    For some reason, FCP has developed a problem with capturing media that it didn't have before.
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  • Scratch drive setup - Mac

    CS4 AME with a MBP
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    F: Media
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  • Esata vs fw800 user preferences set up for scratch drive

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    Message was edited by: magnumip

    Found it. Page 1820 of the FCP 7 user manual (.pdf)
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  • What RAID Setup do you use for your Macbook Pro Scratch Drive?

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    Sorry I'm not making a lot of sense right now, but I've searched through 20 or so pages of the forum and didn't see that anyone had addressed this question yet.

    OK, just to give you a frame of reference, I just performed the following tests -
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    Capture to external WD USB2 drive: 26 Second clip takes 44 Seconds
    Capture to external CalDigit 2 Sata Drive Array, Raid 0, via Firewire 800: 26 Second clip takes 42 seconds
    OK, so now I move the camera over to my Mac Pro 8-Core, 2 x 3.2 Ghz Quad Core Xeon with 14 gigs of ram, and capture *to the same external CalDigit 2 Sata Drive Array,* Raid 0, via Firewire 800: 26 Second clip takes 11 seconds
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    Hope this helps.
    Message was edited by: Meg The Dog to correct typo

  • Benefits from using the MSI driver against the latest on my R4870 ?

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    Code: [Select]
    MSI 23-07-2010 Version 8.723
    ATI 15-09-2010 Version 10.9
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     I'm pretty sure most people use the CCC drivers from AMD/ATI. If you're not having any problems that can be traced to drivers there's no need to bother with them.

  • Scratch drive recommendation?

    Hello Dear Ones,
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    Thank you in advance,
         s
    (Sent from my Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80.)

    Thank you for your reply.
    Aside from the interface, what are the relative speeds of the DRIVE TYPES themselves. Aside from SSD being more rugged, which is faster? Seek, read, write, etc. I have a need for speed. Photoshop and Final Cut hoover (eat) memory.
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    And since I have more money than brains, I also have an eSATA 3/4 card with a couple of eSATA drives for another set-up.
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    I even constructed a USB 2.0 thumbdrive RAID with several 16gb Kingston DataTravelers. It worked is all I can say.
    Thunderbolt is new and supposed to be the fastest interface for external drives, I understand.
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