Dedicated Render Scratch Disc

Will setting rendering scratch disc to separate hard drive speed up render times? I want to dedicate twin internal Raptor 150"s in a striped raid for this purpose.

Shane - if you are reading from the same drive you are writing to - doesn't this sound less fast than reading from one (source) and writing to another (for the render)?
I'm not questioning if you are correct (you're certainly one of the God's of FCP), but it does sound less fast.
I'm very curious as I'm taking about an hour to render a 3 minute clip in FCP with dvMatte Pro 3's Screen Fix and dvMatte Pro the only filters.
I'm rendering 1080 x 1920 24p ProRes HQ on a 2008 dual Quad-core 2.8GHZ, 10GB RAM, nVidia 8800GT going out to a RAID with 213 MB/s read/ 174 MB/s Write (according to Black Magic speed tester). Both source and destination are on the same RAID drive.
I have my dual monitors setup in mirror mode to conserve VRAM - and FCP 6.0.2 is the only app running on 10.5.1 (can't upgrade to 10.5.2 until my RAID drivers certify it).
Any clues as how to speed this up a bit?

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How to determine the scratch disc size?

hello,
once i was reading an adobe pdf "How to get better performance in photoshop cs5" - that was in 2009 or 2010, and may be outdated, but there was a calculation method
to determine the size of a scratch disc. (similar calculation see below, if i can remember right)
i am asking myself, how can i determine the correct size of an external SSD-scratch disc, only used by photoshop (completely empty):
should i buy a 128GB or 256GB or 512GB SSD which is only reserved for photoshop?
basic question 1 : i guess i should avoid to set the internal SSD as photoshop scratch disc, as it slows down everything?
basic question 2 : in sense of maximum performance: better buy an external USB3.0 or thunderbolt SSD? will photoshop really use the extra thunderbolt speed when swapping data?
secondary question:
can i calculate the size regarding my daily working habits?
i am mainly working like this:
- with my imac 27" late 2013 with 32GB RAM and 256 GB internal pci-e SSD (800 MB/sec), which will stay always half empty for performance reasons.
- OSX 10.8 mountain lion and 10.9 mavericks soon
- photoshop cs5, cs6 and cc (always without extended)
- 8bit and 16bit mode
- only RGB
- with latest phocus/Hasselblad and canon RAW Files which produce a basic .psb document at ...
- 10.000 x 7000 px at 300dpi
- with average 10 - 40 main image layers and 20-50 adjustement layers (try to reduce that in 16bit)
- .psb file is 2-20 GB big (file in finder)
- 16bit file compression is off, when saving .psb files (faster handling)
- set photoshop to 70% ram usage (from 32GB RAM)
i wonder how to calculate ?
for example:
10.000 x 7000 px at 300dpi needs for one image layer at 16bit: 2GB RAM in photoshop cs6 or cc (just as a number), this may be wrong
so lets take 2GB RAM and multiply with 10 image layers in my .psb file (16bit) = 20 GB RAM, and multiply with 20 adjustment layers (guess they need less ram, for one lets say 500MB) = 20GB + 10GB = this 16bit .psb layer file would need 30GB RAM, so when i have 32GB in my imac, i set cs6 or cc to 70% ram usage, it misses at least round 8-10GB RAM > can i guess that photoshop would swap these 8GB onto my scratch disc? or do i miss something important in my thinking?
tricky thinking
thanks for help

station_two wrote:
The rule of thumb I follow says to figure on 50 to 100 times the size of your largest file ever multiplied by the number of files you have open. I have seen the scratch file exceed 300 GB once, an admittedly rare occurrence, but it often exceeds 200 GB when stitching large panoramas and the like.
As an example—and stressing that I'm aware that others have even more scratch space than I do—I keep two dedicated, physically separate hard drives as my primary and secondary Photoshop scratch disks and a lot of GB free on my boot drive for the OS. I also have 16 GB of RAM installed.
Additionally, if you only have a single HD, i.e. your boot drive, you'd need it to be large enough to accommodate both the swap files of the OS as well as Photoshop's scratch.
- i dont use HDD anymore only SSDs, both internal and external
- i set history state to only 5 or 6, to improve performance
- i set cache size to 4 and tiles to "big and flat" with 1028kb (there is no "big and much layers" option)
- is this still the rule of thumb? i read it in 2009 , too, guess it was outdated, as cs6 and cc have improved codes in terms of performance?
- if you say "50 to 100 times the size of your largest file ever multiplied by the number of files you have open.":
i will not open more than one document at same time to prevent performance lags, so lets calc like: dokument size in finder (you mean in finder or doc. size shown in photoshop?) = e.g. 5GB x 100 = 500GB, so my external scratch disc SSD, i would buy now, should be at least 500GB, USB 3.0 or thunderbolt ... maybe better thunderbolt, yes? with usb 3.0 i could gain 300MB/sec if thats enough for photoshop?
thanks

Photoshop scratch disc (SSD), thunderbolt or USB3.0?

asking the adobe team photoshop engineers, if there is one?
which kind of scratch disc are you using? i think you must know it
i would like to know whether the difference of usb3.0 to thunderbolt is marginally or not?
reading that there is a difference between using the boot disc as scratch disc and using a dedicated separate disc,
i think using the boot disc as scratch is not a good decision, as it is used by the system already, although it would be very fast (700MB/s)
i am professionally working with photoshop cs6 under medium to high demands:
16bit .psb layer files, document size 20x40inch, 300dpi, RGB - my average filesize is 10 - 20 GB per .psb layer file.
currently using an external usb3 500GB SSD (crucial m500) as a photoshop cs6 scratch disc,
under 10.9.1, in the moment i am using an imac 27" late 2013 with internal PCI-e SSD (700MB/sec)
and 32GB RAM. my info panel says, that 32GB RAM is not enough and the scratch disc is active, (50GB is needed, 32GB is available)
calculating scratch disc size: 20 x 100 = 200GB as needed to scratch, the 500GB SSD is a lot more than i need, actually?
in mid 2014 i want to buy the new mac pro with 64GB RAM, also would need a dedicated scratch disc,
as i heard that photoshop is constantly using the scratch disc, also, if it doesnt need it.
it writes the whole image onto the disc, when opened.
my concern is:
USB 3.0 is not built as a pure data connection (as thunderbolt is), it has a weak read/write sustained throughput, as i heard.
as conclusion: must i use an external thunderbolt SSD as photoshop scratch disc to prevent lag and performance drops compared to usb 3.0 or is the difference marginally?
thanks!

For optimal performance in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS5 (I will soon upgrade to CS6 or CC), how should I distribute my OS, apps, Scratch, Caches, DNGs, and working TIFFs among these drives?:
120 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
240 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
960 GB OWC Mercury Accelsior SSD
(connected by Thunderbolt TB1 OWC Helios unit)
Also, probably irrelevant: multiple individual hard drives connected via eSATA and USB3, not RAIDed together
The Accelsior SSD, connected by TB1, is by far the fastest drive. Would partitioning and devoting different parts of it to different functions help?
I'm able to fit the OS, apps, email, etc. on the 120 GB SSD. But I don't assume that I should.
Here's the most relevent info about the rest of my hardware:
Hardware Overview:
Model Name:   iMac
Model Identifier:   iMac12,2
Processor Name:   Intel Core i7
Processor Speed:   3.4 GHz
Number of Processors:   1
Total Number of Cores:   4
L2 Cache (per Core):   256 KB
L3 Cache:   8 MB
Memory:   32 GB
Boot ROM Version:   IM121.0047.B1F
SMC Version (system):   1.72f2
Many thanks,
Mark

Do I have to specify scratch disc location each time?

hi all ive just finally found my self in a position to have a dedicated hard drive for cache, scratch disks etc.. WHen I create a new project I go to the scratch discs tab and specify the hard drive as the location for them, however I find myself having to do this every time i create a new project.. can I not set it to default to there, if so could somebody explain how?
many thanks

The answer is "no" and "yes".
If you put your cache where you put your projects then each time you create a project, your cache will follow. That is probably not a good idea for most people, but it is not bad if you store your projects on a separate drive specifically set up for the purpose of putting projects and cache.
If it is not a good idea for you, then you may find that you want to do what I do. I have a few project templates I use. They are not officially templates, but I think of them that way. They have all of the settings I like to use, they have the right number and the right type of tracks, they store the cache on a specific drive set up for that usage, they have some generic footage with certain effects applied so I can copy those efects when I need them, and they have my logo, and intro music.
When I want to create a new project, I merely copy the directory that the project is in and open the project in the new directory. That probably saves me 10 minutes of gathering resources and another few minutes of set up. Every time.

Resetting scratch disc?

I have a couple of external drives that I store project files on from FCE. One will not mount (the first in the daisy chain of two) and have tried everything to do so, but, it seems that I will have to remove for data recovery and a new drive (FYI: it's a Western Digital MY Book Pro Edition). Anyway, FCE is looking for the missing drive before it will open. Apparently, I have to reset scratch disk since I can't mount the missing drive. Do I simply uncheck the missing drive in "Scratch disks", physically remove that drive, hook up second drive directly to computer and check it's boxes in "scratch discs"?
Once I get info restored onto new drive I'll want to replace it and just want to ensure that I don't screw anything up on past projects or do something that will render FCE useless for project I need to start tomorrow. Am I making this more complex than it actually is?

I second Tom's recommendation. At this point you don't want to update anything, especially since your G5 is working ok. You want to resolve your scratch disk problem BEFORE doing anything else.
Further -
• Tiger (10.4.11) is very stable
• Leopard is no longer officially available, although you can find copies at OWC, MacMall, eBay, etc. If you intend to keep your G5 for the forseeable future, you might want to pick up a copy of Leopard before it disappears.
• Snow Leopard is only for Intel Macs.
• Upgrading QuickTime at this point is likely to break your version of FCE
• Do not upgrade iTunes, as it will bring a new version of QuickTime with it
• And don't do Safari 4 either, assuming you haven't already gone there. If you need a new browser, go with Firefox - it works great.
You could upgrade to FCE 4 and that will take care of any immediate QuickTime version concerns - but DO NOT upgrade to QuickTime X if you find it available.
And, I can't say this enough - solve your scratch disk issue FIRST, before updating or upgrading anything.

How do I stop my macbook telling me scratch discs are full

I have reduced applications photos email etc from my laptop but I am being told 1. Start up discs are full and 2. Scratch discs are full what exactly does this mean. Would more memory help if so what type. The macbook is 2008 2.4 core 2 Duo, 2GB 667 MHz DDR SDRAM. Thanks I know this is a daft question for most people.

Yeah, same problem here, same sentiment! it sure feels like harassment. no solution works (even the absurd ones). makes me regret the update :s

Using an external hard drive (HD), on a network, as a scratch disc?

I am weighing my options on creating a wireless network around an external HD. My macbook pro is getting full and I am going to do a spring cleaning and get everything in order. I pretty much know how I want to do it but I am wondering if I can use an external hard drive as a scratch disc, wirelessly?
Thanks in advance,
Howi

Nevermind. This answered my question: http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-610667.html
Howi

How in the world can I select my external hard drive as a scratch disc for video? Please skip the obvious, like 'is it plugged in?'

At wit's end trying to select my external hard drive to load video on. Time Machine backed stuff up on it so the computer knows it's there but it won't show anywhere else, iMovie or FCE4.

Hi Eric and thanx for the fast response. I've had very little time to piddle around with this iMac and fce4 since I got it a few years back but I DO remember seeing an option back then--when capturing video from the camera--to choose some other scratch disc. Some time after buying and plugging in the ext. drive I clicked on Time Machine (not even knowing what it was--some window popped up and it looked good). I wonder if turning on Time Mach has locked me out of the ext. drive. It doesn't show up ANYWHERE ANYTIME now, not under system pref., user pref. in fce4 or iMovie or anything else EXCEPT when I click on Time Machine it does tell me I've 2.97 terrabytes of space (which has to be the ext. drive; the iMac has 500 gb). I'm thinking of uninstalling and reinstalling fce4 and starting over.

Scratch Disc Questions using Firewire External Drive & Imac

Hello. I've read through the existing questions regarding scratch disc and Photoshop, yet can't seem to find an answer to my questions. I would greatly appreciate any tips/advice. Here is my setup and situation:
I am running an iMac with a 2.16 intel core 2 duo processor, 3 GB memory, and running OS X version 10.6.4. I am currently using versions cs3 and cs4 of Photoshop, but plan to upgrade to cs5 soon.
The problem I am having is when running Photoshop, my computer becomes very slow. After reading about possible reasons, I came across a couple of sources (including Adobe themeselves) mentioning that the scratch disc should be a designated drive seperate from the drive containing the operating system. Since I am using an iMac that only allows for one internal drive, my only apparent option seems to be an external drive.
Many people say don't use an external drive, but if you are going to; use an eSATA or firewire. The imac does have firewire 800 capabilities. Should I consider this?
Now I'm wondering if it's a bad idea to purchase a macbook for my next computer (what I wanted to do) because it will also only have one drive, not allowing for a seperate drive for the scratch disc. Any thoughts? I've read around the net but haven't found any definitive answers.

Designer,
Photoshop benefits greatly from having a scratch disk on a separate physical drive, not on the boot disk or on another partition of the boot disk. It's almost not worth connecting via Firewire 400 because the transfer limitations don't allow much performance improvement. But using a Firewire 800 connection gives excellent performance.
Running Photoshop on a one-drive machine is a little frustrating due to the performance hit without the separate scratch drive.
Rich

I have PSE-12 on Mac. Got message "scratch disc full" tried changing drive to backup disc. Now PSE-12 will not open to allow me to go back to original drive. What can I do?

Using PSE-12 on my Mac and got the message 'scratch disc full' I have backup disc attached to computer and tried making this the number 1 disc. I now can't get PSE-12 to open so that I can get back and reverse the order of these discs. What can I do?

Go to your username>library>preferences and delete:
com.adobe.PhotoshopElements.plist
Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 paths
Adobe Photoshop Elemetns 12 settings
and any lockfiles with the same names. That library is hidden in 10.7 and up. To see it, click the Go menu in the finder and hold down the Option key and it will appear below the little house for your user account. While you're in there go to the saved application states folder and delete any for PSE.

What is a Scratch disc?

Hi, My discs (80+120gb) are almost full, I sought (and gained) info on the expanding your Mac forum and noticed a thread that referred to using a disc as a "scratch disc" for Photoshop, I use Photoshop a lot and would like to know what scratch disc means and how one makes a Photoshop scratch disc.
I am about to add a 500gb external FW HD so will have a disc spare to "free up" Would making one of them a scatch disc help Photoshops perfomance?
I can dedicate the 120gb to Photoshop as the 80gb contains the operating sysyem.
I am not the most computer literate person so easy English responses would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Robert

Hi
The following article, courtesy of MacGurus, contains some useful information on improving Photoshop performance, although it's a little techy in places:
http://homepage.mac.com/boots911/.Public/PhotoshopAccelerationBasics2.3.pdf
Just be aware that if both discs (80GB and 120GB) are connected to the same ribbon cable (as master and slave), they have to take turns sharing the ATA bus. Consequently if the Photoshop application is on one and the other is being used as the scratch disc, performance may not be optimal (although may still be better than at present).

How to Reformat the hard drive I use to edit with..."scratch disc"

Today when I turned on my computer I got a strange message on the screen that basically said I need to back up one of my drives and format it asap. It also said the computer couldn't repair it.
This is the HD I use to edit with as my scratch disc with Final Cut Pro.
I am in the process of backing my files up now. One thing I noticed was that some of my files I don't need anymore and wanted to trash them but it won't allow me to trash files! I get an error message when I drag the file to the trash. So I am going to have to back everything up and I guess will have to erase the disc.
I never reformatted a disc before so if anyone knows what I need to do that would be great since this is the drive I used to edit with.
Thanks.
Message was edited by: DVX100Shooter

To reformat a hard drive, launch Disk Utilities (in the Applications->Utilities folder) and click on the Erase tab. Select the drive you want to reformat then choose "Mac OS Extended" ... give the volume a name and click on the Erase button.
Once the drive is reformatted, open FCP and assign it as the scratch disk.
However, the drive may be suffering from other problems that reformatting won't fix.
-DH

Mac OS X - Scratches Discs!

Is anyone else having this problem? My new Mac OS X - desktop - is scratching discs. It is not how I pull the discs out. I am very careful. Apple has already replaced the superdrive twice now! And it is still scratching! The scratches are circular and obviously happen as the disc is spinning in the drive. Multiple scratches happen nearly every time I put a disc in the machine. What is going on?

Hi c2zion: If the main reason for your wanting X11, is to install Open Office, another very good option is Neo Office. It is very similar to Open Office, and doesn't require X11. It is available here: http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/download.php
Stedman
MBP 1.83, 1.5gB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.10) Quiet, Cool, Re-furbished, iPod mini, iPod shuffle

Suggestion For An External Scratch Disc needed

I have recently learned that I had my scratch disc set up incorrectly to the same internal SSD in the Mac Book Pro. I assume that to keep the maximum transfer speed I need and external HDD or SSD with FireWire 800 instead of USB. I have found a few of those but they are much larger than what I need in GB and physical size.
I need something portable and reliable since I do most of the work on the road.
Thanks for your suggestions.

Have you considered a G-Drive mobile or G-Drive mini SSD? Both are bus-powered.
If you're ok using AC power, look at the G-Drive mini.
These are very nice units - small, reliable, good reputation.
FireWire (or eSATA if you have a MBP with an ExpressCard slot) is the way to go. USB generally cannot keep up with the sustained throughput required for video.

What does it mean when I get the message "scratch disc is full"?

Trying to work on Photoshop and I'm getting the message, "scratch disc is full".

Ultimately here is the deal. Like OS X and Windows do at the system level, Photoshop will grow a virtual memory scratch file on your hard drive if you don't have enough RAM to do what you are trying to do.
That means, step 1 in preventing the scratch file is to put more RAM in the Mac so that Photoshop doesn't run out so fast and have to shove data off to the disk to make room.
Step 2 is to put the scratch file on another disk. This is why pros have often used desktop towers, because you can put multiple disks inside them. For example, system on one disk with lots of free space, photo library on another disk so it can grow freely, and another disk that is used exclusively to hold scratch files for Photoshop and other programs that need to do the same thing like Apple Final Cut. Splitting the data streams (system, file access, scratch) like this also speeds up the machine considerably since they're not all trying to use the disk at the same time.
The way you put the scratch file on another disk is to go into the Photoshop prefs, click Performance, and assign one of your other disks as a Scratch Disk there. (Use a fast disk, not a network or USB 1.0/2.0 disk, and partitioning your main disk will not help.)
If you do this, you don't need to change your main disk at all, you don't need to manually move any files off of it. Because by moving the scratch file off your main disk, the 58GB of free space you have there will now be plenty.
I used to use a PowerBook with an external monitor as a Photoshop machine, and plugged in a FireWire 800 external as a scratch disk. Even just doing that helped a lot.

Dedicated Render Scratch Disc

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