Hard drive setup for CS5.5

Okay, finished a new build:
Intel Core i7 2600K processor
Asus P8Z68-V motherboard
Corsair 16 GB memory
Zotac GTX560 video card
OCZtech 60 GB SSD boot drive
2x Hitachi 1.5 TB 7200 hard drives
LG blu-ray burner
So the question is about the hard drive setup. Boot drive is pretty basic, with Windows 7 pro, CS5.5, firefox, and MS Office about the only things installed. So, two questions:
1. How do I change the boot drive so that things like "My Documents" is put on the D: or E: drive rather than the C boot drive? Is it a Windows thing or do changes need to be made within Office or Firefox?
2. How do I set up the two extra hard drives for Premier? The IT guy combined the two drives into one partition, which kindof defeats the point of having two drives, right? So we need to split those back out so there's a D & E drive and then I designate within Premier that the media cache and previews goes on one, and the storage & media & projects goes on the other? Do I need to do that within all the separate programs -- After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, etc. -- or can it be done all at once?
Thanks for any help!

1. Windows.
2. Those disks are in raid0 and appear as a single disk, so all you need is to have the IT guy add another two disks in a similar raid0 and to add an external disk for your backups.
See Adobe Forums: Generic Guideline for Disk Setup

Similar Messages

Hard Drive setup for CS5 master collection

Dear All,
I am looking for advice on what drive configuration to use. I am currently reformatting all drives for a new cs5 install and have the following drives:
1. WD Raptor 10000rpm 150gig
2. WD Raptor 10000rpm 300gig
3. Seagate 7200 rpm - 1.5tb
4. Seagate 7200 rpm - 1.5tb
I have read various forum messages, but need some clarification on what to install on what drive
I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with 6 gig memory and i7 processor
I assume windows is best installed on either of the faster WD drives. and my video projects on the seagate drives.
Where should cs5 program files be ?
I have raid options but dont know a lot about the best set up
Any advice most welcome, would like to try to get it right first time!
Regards
Chris Anderson

Hi Harm
many thanks for your reply. I am considering purchasing new HD's specific to build a machine just for CS5.
What would you recommend for performance. No price budget as such.
Im thinking 15000rpm.
Im thinking SATA - is this the fastest?
Do i have to consider the motherboard to support fast sata drives? - i am confused as i see you can get sata drives with a 6gig transfer speed, does this depend
on the motherboard?
Would a bigger cache ie 64mb make a good improvement?
Any advice most welcome
Thanks
Chris Anderson

External hard drive setup for time machine reading as a virtual cd

Why is my MacBook Pro reading my external hard drive setup for time machine reading as a virtual cd?
Thanks

Hi Christian,
Is this something that has happened from the start? If so, I would reformat the disk and setup TM from scratch again.
Prepare the external HD by connecting to the Mac, open Disk Utility, select the manufacturer’s name of the external HD, select Partition and choose GUID Partition Table, format to Apple OS Extended (Journaled); quit Disk Utility.
Open System Preferences.
Click on Time Machine.
Click on “Select Disk.”
Click just to the left of "On" to turn TM on if it's not already on.
Click on the disk or partition you want to use.
Click on “Use for backup.”
Leave external HD connected, and TM will automatically do its thing.

Best Hard Drive Setup for Premiere Pro CS5.5

I'm running Premiere Pro cs5.5 on a Dell XPS 8300 (I know, I know!) with an i72600 chip and a 560TI card. The system came with two 500 GB Sata hard drives in a Raid0 configuration. I've seen a lot about proper hard drive setup but I'm a newbie (hence the Dell - I purchased before I read the forums). Should I add a third (or more) drive? How can I configure them taking into account what's already onboard? thanks very much!

If it were me, I'd add at least two more hard drives. A smallish one around 250 to 320 GB for the System drive. I'd reinstall Windows onto that.
Then I'd break out the RAID into separate drives, using one for Project and Scratch files and one for Exports.
The second new drive would be a really big one - 1TB or more. This I'd use exclusively for Media.*
* If I had a tapeless camera, such as AVCHD, then I'd definitely build in some kind of data safety, like at least a second 1TB drive for a RAID 1. Or if I had more money, add a third 1TB and a RAID controller card to make it a RAID 3.

Hard Drive Setup for Creative Professional

Hi. I own a Mac Pro 3Ghz tower, and I only have one 250Gb hard drive along with an Iomega external 250Gb hard drive. I really need to upgrade my hard drives and create proper backups. I'm just not sure about the best options for backing up all my data and what the best options are for setting up my harddrives. Can anyone offer advice to a graphic designer that needs to upgrade his hard drive setup? I'm not sure what Raid is, so I would need to better understand what that does as well. I guess I need a road plan for the best way to go about all this upgrading.
Thanks.

Hi There,
I know you posted this more than a month ago, but i thought i'd see what you found and...what you can offer me in the way of answers. I appreciate any help you can give me!! Thanks in advance. I might have a couple options for you too.
I have the same set up pretty much. 1 250gb internal, 1 250 gb external, plus a 175gb external that i keep off site. Files are everywhere, yes i have copies, but it's an organizational disaster and not fail safe. If i lost a clients job, i'd loose more than the cost of just setting up a good backup system.
I found a few things out.
You can set up a software raid on your macpro using disk utility(although I don't know how to do it yet). (for raid info, look up raid on wikipedia, it's just a variety of ways to create more than one copy of data on any # of drives. 2 drives is a mirror image, 3 can be striped(any one drive can fail), and more...there are speed advantages with these too. )
Anyway i have 3 bays open for drives in my 2.66ghz quad. So setting up a software raid is option 1 - but from reading forums it seems like this isn't easy and requires maintainance? If you add a drive or remove one it erases all drives(?).
There is a system my friend turned me on to called Drobo.
It seems like the easiest solution and one that is lasting, check out the website at drobo.com it's external, has 4 bays and you can add and remove drives on a whim and upgrade up to 4tb. seems the easy solution, but costs 500 and then you need to purchase drives. but you can use any drives and it seems maintanance free.
Any recommendations - is software raid easier than I imagine?
Anyone have any offsite storage ideas? (.mac would be ideal, but it costs so much for storage and it's slow).
Looking forward to hearing your solution, and any advice for me.
Thanks,
Josh

Question: Hard Drive Setup for Photoshop

Hi There,
I am looking to purchase a new Dell system for use with Adobe Creative suites, and will mostly be using Photoshop. The system will be running CS4 with Vista 64bit, and we will use 8GB or RAM (or more if anyone suggest). My main question is in regards to hard drive configuration. My partition setup will be as follows:
C: windows OS, windows page file, adobe program files
D: photoshop scratch disk
E: data files
In terms of performance, how would you suggest I purchase/configure drives between the options below:
1) Buy 3 sas 15k drives and make a single RAID 0 disk. Partition the single disk with the 3 partitions listed above
2) Buy 3 sas 15 k drives, and put one partition on each drive (non-RAID 0)
Let me know if you have any recommendations on this setup or any other recommendations would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Thanks Freeagent!

Best hard drive setup for Logic Pro?..

Hi all,
I'm about to get a Mac Pro, and I was wondering a bit about the best hard drive set up for running Logic Pro.
1. Should I go with Western Digital Caviar SE ? Noise is a primary issue, I'd like them to be as silent as possible. Could anybody tell me their experiences with this disc?.. I also hear that Samsungs Spinpoint are almost silent. Any truth to this? (I want my discs in sizes of 500Gb.)
2. Is this a good setup:
D1: Mac OS, Logic Pro
D2: Audio for Logic Pro
D3: Sample libraries, including direct from disc streaming.
3. I seem to remember from another post that someone wrote that raiding discs could actually decrease performance when working with audio. Is this the case?
Thanks,
Curvebender.
Message was edited by: curvebender
Message was edited by: curvebender

curvebender wrote:
2. Is this a good setup:
D1: Mac OS, Logic Pro
D2: Audio for Logic Pro
D3: Sample libraries, including direct from disc streaming.
Yes, excellent way to go. One suggestion: on your sample or audio drive, or an external FW, install a basic system + Logic app only. This enables you to have another system to boot from in case of trouble, or you can use it as a test bed for future updates etc. without affecting your primary system. You'd only boot into this drive in case of problems or for testing. I currently have Leopard running on one drive to test it out as I don't want to move to 10.5.x yet.

External Hard Drive Setup for Backup and Final Cut Express?

I have 500GB internal storage on my iMac, using TimeMachine to back up to a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent (about 1.5 yrs. old) via FireWire 400. I currently use the internal storage as my scratch/capture disk (I know -- very bad). I recently bought an HD video cam, and my storage is running out fast.
I've done a good amount of research on external storage, and I am thinking of getting an external Mercury Elite enclosure from OWC (4 bays, connects via eSata, Firewire 400/800) and two 1.5GB Seagate LP hard drives. (I figure I might as well get the enclosure with 4 bays and an eSata connection for the future, even though the iMac has no eSata connection.) I plan to continue to use the FreeAgent to backup my internal storage (via FireWire 400), and with the FireWire 800, use one of the 1.5GB external drives as my scratch/capture disk and the other to back it up. Since TimeMachine allows only one backup volume (I think), I figure I can use ProSoft (which comes in a bundle with the enclosure) for the other backup (or for both backups for that matter). Dealing with RAID seems excessive to me at this point -- I'm mid-tech, I would say.
Any thoughts would be appreciated -- thanks!

Thanks for replying again. I think you've convinced me to scale back. But I still think I should go with an expandable 4 bay enclosure, but just starting with a 1TB drive, to back up my internal 500GB and the 500GB Seagate, which I'll use as scratch. Then, when that fills up, I can add a 2TB drive to the enclosure to back up the others, and use the 1TB drive as the scratch.

Hard drive setup for a budget build?

Yes - I'll admit it - I want to avoid spending a lot on hard drives if possible. I realize that I may lose some r/w performance doing so...
What is the recommendation for how many and how large the hard drives need to be for Premiere CS6 editing?
Here's what I'm considering to start (Each is a single drive, no RAID):
C: SSD, OS, program files, page file
D: 2TB HDD, Media, Projects, User Folders (my documents etc)
E: 2TB HDD, Export, Scratch, Previews
F: 3TB HDD, Backup only
Would this be adequate? What would be the performance penalty?
Its just that after spending so much $ on the CPU/MB/RAM/GPU recommendations I find here I'd like to save money somewhere in my build... I think the machine will be used for NLE maybe for 5 or 6 projects per year. So far all SD, but may start some HD soon as that's where things are going.
Thanks for any info,
Ari

Jim,
You are correct that there are good and bad models, or should I say not so good with different brands. WD Caciar Balcks for instance have a great reputation for stand-alone disks, not so with parity raids due to the TLER problems. Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 has a great reputation with the 3 TB model, but opinions differ on the 2 TB model. But the 7200.14 range is probably the fastest conventional disk currently. OTOH the range is hampered by the one year warranty, which is ridiculously short. Hitachi Ultrastars are another range of very good disks with a long warranty.
When I was making my choice of disks, the warrranty factor and price/perfomance led me to Seagate Constellation ES Enterprise disks, but hey, I needed 25 of them and a raw capacity of 25 TB would suffice initially. I can always add another 6 of those disks internally if I need to.
When looking for SSD's, I had a shortlist that included Intel 520 and Crucial M4's, but ultimately decided on Corsair Performance Pro, because of the least performance degradation in 'steady state', far less than the Crucial or Intel. IMO for SSD's the best shortlist contains Corsair PP, Plextor M5 Pro and Samsung 840.

Opinions sought: What is the optimal external hard drive setup for LP8?

I've got a MacBook Pro with only 10GB left on the HD after installation. I'm going to grab a nice big external Lacie 750 GB 7200RPM HD (via FireWire 800) solely for use with the Logic Studio suite. I have a few questions about optimal setup.
Option A: I leave the Logic programs on my MacBook Pro, and use the Lacie to record to.
Option B: I delete the Logic stuff from my MBP, and re-install all programs and content on the Lacie.
Option C: I install Mac OSX on the Lacie (making it bootable, I presume), circumvent my MacBook Pro's internal HD altogether, and run Logic from that.
Anybody? I'm particularly interested in hearing about what the issues are concerning latency and such.
Thanks in advance...
c.

Glad to see you chose "B"!
Just to clarify... I meant to say what Rohan suggested, i.e., apps on system drive, not on the Lacie.
Now, what's "content"? Well, it can be a lot of things...
• projects (including .bak song files)
• audio files
• sampler instruments and their samples (EXS)
• non-EXS sampler instruments and their samples
• apple loops
Three scenarios I'd suggest:
*OPTION 1*
Use your external drive for recording audio only. Store everything else on your system drive (sampler instruments/samples/apple loops, etc.). Also save your projects to your system drive. In this scenario your record path for audio would be your LaCie (create an audio folder specifically for each project). When you do routines saves of a project, leave the audio on the LaCie. Don't "move" them.
Thing is, you want to keep a certain amount of your HD space free and clear (I think the going figure is 20%) and this is for system use. It's important. But as you add more sample libraries as well as projects, you'll start to eat up your system HD space. But at least your audio recordings will be contained on a separate drive and not impinge on your HD space, keeping as much of it as free and clear as possible.
Anyway, if you go with this scenario, when you want to archive a project to another external HD or DVDs, you have a few choices:
a) do a re-save of the project to a new folder so that you've consolidated all of the material into one place, or...
b) do a re-save of the project to a new folder, include all sampler instruments & samples and everything else except audio; keep the audio in its own folder (just as it exists on the LaCie) and copy that to your archiving medium separately.
There are probably other strategies as well, but those are just two suggestions...
*OPTION 2*
Have TWO external drives: one for audio recording only, and another one for all other "content" (apple loops, samples, maybe even EXS sampler instruments, depending on how big your EXS library is). Store your projects on your system HD. With this scenario you keep your system HD very clear for system use.
I guess the main gist of the above two suggestions is that you dedicate your audio drive for audio. The less extraneous stuff on your audio drive, the higher your track count will be.
OPTION3
Same as above, having two external drives, but saving your projects to the second drive (not the audio drive). If your songs typically don't contain a ton of audio tracks, this should work fine.
Finally, a word about LaCie drives... I have three of them and have never had a problem. However, people who have reported problems with them are often quite vociferous in advising others to avoid them (and who could blame them?). So, just some perspective for ya.

Optimal Hard Drive Setup for 3D and CS6 Motion Graphics?

Hello, I'm trying to figure out the best way to separate the following into different hard drives for best performance...
- OS (probably Windows 7 or 8 64bit)
- OS page swap disk
- Programs (Cinema4D and Adobe CS6)
- Adobe Media/Disk Cache
- Project files
- Source/Import Data Files
- Render/Output Data Files
So far, I'm thinking of...
- One Internal SATA3 SSD for OS, OS swap, Programs, Adobe Media Cache
- One Internal SATA2 HDD for Project and Source/Import Data Files
- One External USB3 HDD for Render/Output Files
I'm wondering if separating the files in a different way would be more optimal, and/or if adding more SDD hard drives for the Page Swap file and Media Disk Cache would we worth the money. Particularly, should the OS, OS swap file, Programs, and Media Cache be separated into different drives?

1. Why separate Project and Media(I'm assuming you mean footage/photoshop/ect.) files? Aren't project files very small?
Premiere Pro and After Effects project files aren't that large, but on this drive I also include any audio and stills used in the project, as well as the Encore project. Essentially anything you would need to rebuild the project down the line would go here, except the media. That goes on it's own dedicated drive.
Depending on the complexity, a project folder can easily get into multi-gigabyte range.
2. If I have one SATA3 SSD with OS(plus page file) and programs on it, would it be better to put the Cache/Scratch/Previews there as well, vs. on a separate slower SATA2 HDD disk?
I'd go separate. Don't put anything on the System drive but the OS and Windows.

Hard Drive Setup for Premiere Pro CS 6

I've recently made the switch from FCP 7 to Premiere and I'm trying to setup my hard drives. I've been reading up in the forums, but I'm still not sure on the best setup. I work with Canon DLSR footage 90% of the time. Here are the drives I've currenlty got it setup at below, but I'm willing to swtich it up to something better.
300GB WD 10,000 -- OS, Programs, Pagefile
2TB WD 10,000 RAID0 -- Media & Projects
2TB WD black 7200 -- Preview, Media Cache, Exports
2TB WD green -- Time Machine
Thanks in advance

Your drives and your drive setup both look pretty good to me. Possibly moving previews to your RAID could help. Realize too that fine tweaks at the level of performance you already have may help part of your workflow (i.e. timeline work) vs. other tasks (renders).
Regards,
Jim

Fastest hard drive setup- for creative professional

So with RAM upgrades being out of the question for the next month waiting for competition to drive down prices I turn to my hard disk situation in my new stock mac pro.
I am a creative professional with little to no interest in gaming. I am mearly looking to get the best performance out of final cut and the CS2 family of programs. So let me ask you all this.
With my one 250 gig drive, would this be a good general storage drive for say the OS, program files, music, and documents
While maybe setting up another drive as a scratch drive for photoshop and final cut? I have never setup a scratch disk or had the luxury of doing this. How would this help and how would I do it?
Also, how would raid 0 help me in this situation
Or maybe 10,000 RPM raptor drives, 16meg cache? Or simply 7200 fast enough.
I apologize for the lack of focus with this question, I am simply looking for the fastest setup with internal hard disks I can!
-Nicholas

First let me say my Raptors have been a RAID 0 for a few years now and they are solid drives compared to my dead Seagate and LaCie external (uses WD IDE drives, but it could have been the LaCie SATA interface)
Once they are properly Zeroed first in Disk Utility (before the RAID set) so the driver software doesn't play guinea pig with my data, they are very good drives. Enterprise level for sure. 24/7, quiet (at first they make slight clucking sounds) and fast as all heck.
Now to answer the original posters question.
RAM is the key to better CS2 performance up to about 3.6GB I believe, then after that I think the memory spills over to the "scratch disk" or boot drive. Now if your boot/scratch drive is a lumbering 500GB, then of course your scratch is going to be slow. With a scratch your trying to mimic the speed of RAM, so it has to be really fast. Like a stripe pair of Raptors for instance.
So having enough RAM to cover all your open apps and files, a GB for Mac OS X and you should be set. If your working on really huge Photoshop/Ampeture/Video files, then a stripe set of Raptors as a scratch/working disk with daily auto backup to a 500GB stock file drive is ideal.
A 150GB Raptor as a boot/app/itunes/bare bones "home" drive with files on another drive is the ideal setup. Mac OS X swaps memory, caches, grabs a iTunes song, small reads and writes to the boot drive all the time. A small, slim filled boot drive, below 50% filled, with fast rotation and access speed, is ideal. Less de-optimization because changing fles are kept off of it.
People notice a immediate difference in Mac OS X with a Raptor as a boot drive.
Note: Striping like mine doesn't give much more performance benefit as one Raptor is enough to speed up Mac OS X if bulky files are placed on another drive. I had stripe my 2 74GB Raptors because I needed more room and the 150GB didn't exist.
(no comp)

Hard Drive Setup for Source Files, Media Cache, Project, Render, etc...

I am working to set up the following drives:
C: SSD for OS and Programs
D: RAID 0 (Three SATA II F3's) for Premiere Projects, where I render too, and Encore Projects
E: RAID 0 (Two SATA III WD Caviar Blacks) for Source Files, media cache, and preview files (if i can get the Marvel controllers/SATA III to RAID that is)
External HD USB 3.0 for backing up projects
Should I be doing this different?
Does anyone think it would be better to use SDD drive(s) instead of HDDs? I

We're almost there Harm, thanks! I'm about to indicate this as being "Answered"
More explicitly, are you suggesting it would look like this?
C: SSD for:
OS and Programs
D: RAID 0 (Three SATA II F3's) for:
Premiere Project
Where I render project too
Encore Project
Source Files (Per Harm's suggestion)
E: RAID 0 (Two SATA III WD Caviar Blacks) for:
Media cache
Preview files
Pagefile
Is two RAIDs more ideal? That is (provided the above configuration is correct); does the pagefile, media cache, and preview files need to be on a RAID?
Should I partition a piece of my E and use that for the pagefile or pagefile, media cache, and preview files? If yes, which? and how much of a partition should I create?
When setting the pagefile, should I set all the other drives to "none" (except the E of course)?
Lastly, regarding my E: drive for media cache, preview files, and pagefile (assuming all this is supposed to be on a different drive). Would I be better off using an SSD for that? Or should I keep my E: drive HDD with RAID 0? I suppose it will depend on what's more important, read or write speed. If read speed is more important than I can get an SSD for under $200 that will be really fast reads. If it's about writing then my WD's in a RAID will be better. So, which is more important for these things, writing speed or reading speed? If the SSD would be a solution for the extra files then I’ll have this set up:
C: SSD for:
OS and Programs
D: RAID 0 (Three SATA II F3's) for:
Premiere Project
Where I render project too
Encore Project
Source Files (Per Harm's suggestion)
E: SSD for:
Media cache
Preview files
Pagefile
F: One SATA III WD Caviar Black for:
Extra Backups and stuff
Thanks Harm, I'm about to have an unprecedented editing experience I think! Finally, after more than 7 years!

What is the best external hard drive setup for pictures and videos?

I have a FireWire 800 port & I'm looking to back up my pix and vids. I've read reviews of alot of different ones. I don't want a time capsule because all the reviews are negative. These are pix & vids that I do not want to lose so how can I safeguard them?

These three brands and models are all excellent. All have similar features and build quality.
OWC (www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro series
Lacie Quadra D2 series
G-Tech G-Series
Personally I use the Lacie's (I have 4) and have been 100% satisfied for the past several years with them.
Roger

Hard drive setup for CS5.5

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