I'm using PSCS6 on a 500GB SSD. Do I still reach a better performance by adding a scratch disk?

Hi,
OS X and PS are running on a 500GB SSD. Since I'm working with a MacBook Pro with 8GB RAM, I'm wondering if an external scratch disk would help to reach a better performance? The files, I'm working on, are usually between 300MB and 900MB.
I appreciate your suggestions.
Thanks,
Daniel

Photoshop PC version anyway seem to fill up the first scratch disk before allocating space from any other scratch disk. So if you has sufficient free space on your scratch SSD you don't need more scratch disk for Photoshop. A raid 0 of ssd will stripe data across ssd devices and my improve performance.

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What to use for scratch disk?

I'll be getting a new mac in the coming year, probably either macbook pro or imac. In either case, I'll have a single internal hard drive. I know that I want to get more into Final Cut Express, and am trying to think ahead for my scratch drive purposes.
It seems to me that I will need a fast external disk drive, and that there are two ways to accomplish this. Either through an eSATA connection, or through a RAID product (or both!), so here are my questions:
1. Should I be more interested in the notebook because it enables me to add an eSATA drive via the express 34 slot?
2. What about RAID drives such as those offered by g-technology? These also seem to be a way to obtain good disk drive speed through striping. If these are good, then am I just as well off getting something like this and using with an iMac via firewire 800?
3. Should I get the best of both worlds by looking for an eSATA product with RAID O? Or is this overkill (i.e. would I do fine with just one or the other?)
Best,
Corey

Corey,
FW400 and FW800 both have sufficient bandwidth to handle video demands in Final Cut Express.
Since most modern hard drives can actually deliver more throughput than either Firewire spec, using SATA (or in your case eSATA) will usually give you better performance. FW800 can nominally deliver 80 MB/sec whereas SATA 1.5 can deliver 150 MB/sec and SATA 3G theoretically 300 MB/sec.
There are two situations where you may see a difference 1) if you have a camcorder that conflicts with other Firewire devices connected to your Mac at the same time (like many Canon models) or 2) when you are copying files/folders between drives. I don't think you will see much of a difference in routine editing in FCE.
Regarding Raid 0, imho the answer depends mostly on three questions - 1) have you covered your backup needs? Raid 0 does not provide backup, in fact Raid 0 alone (without some additional backup capability) actually increases the likelihood of data loss over time. 2) Are you doing enough video to need the benefits of RAID striping? 3) Do you have the budget - RAID will cost you quite a bit more than a plain external drive (eSATA and/or Firewire).
I think eSATA is probably the way things are headed in the market and if you have the choice you wouldn't go wrong with an eSATA express card/34 + external eSATA hard drive. Many of these external drives today support both eSATA and Firewire, just make sure that the actual drive inside is a SATA drive and not a PATA drive with an eSATA/FW bridge board.

How can I close a 1T HD from an Envy 700 HP to a 500GB SSD. There is only 90GB of data to transfer

Box came with intalled WDC 1TB HD. It needs replacing (still healthy for now) and I want to replace with an SSD. No need for a 1T SSD givben that the OS , programs and data files are only 90GB but I can't clone.

Hi there.
The actual amount of data on your disk is more relevant to a clone than partition size. So if you have 90GB of data on your disk and want to clone it to a 500GB SSD typically you shouldn't have much of an issue.
What program are you using for the cloning process? Because you can try Acronis True Image WD edition since your HDD is a WD. I personally use and can recommend you can download it from here:
http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=G1QCvx
Also, here's a KB article from our KB with the steps how to use it:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3682/~/how-to-manually-clone-a-disk-with-acronis-tru...
Hope this helps and let me know how it went!
Official WD Representative.
Please, Kudo me and choose as Answer if this post helped you!

500GB SSD on Classic vs 216GB Flash MacBook Pro Retina?

Would a classic MacBook Pro with 500GB SSD be faster than a 216GB Flash Storage MacBook Pro Retina? I have two options: one with the original MacBook, plus a 500GB SSD from Samsung ($250), vs a 216GB Flash Storage MacBook Pro Retina (the new model).
Performance wise, which would be faster? I use it for programming, Photoshop and a lot of web browsing.

You really would have to bench test them to determine with any accuracy the differences. I suspect the retina might have the edge all other things being equal.
In the real world I do not think that would matter a lot. The CPU/GPU will be the real determinant of speed, and the amount RAM (when it is entirely in use) will have the greater impact on performance.
Ciao.

Walk me thru replacing my good HD to Samsung EVO-840 500GB SSD

Please walk me thru replacing my good HD to Samsung EVO-840 500GB SSD. I need Help. I did back up to Time Machime. I do have a HD USB enclosure. Some level 6 and 7 reps are suggesting purchasing cloneing software to do the job. Please advise the best route for me. I also want to upgrade my memory at the same time. Much thanks.

Mustang69conv wrote:
...How and when do I transfer/install everything from my good old HD to my new SSD? What program do I use? How do I do it?...
Since you aren't upgrading your OS and you're not starting over with a new computer, your old HD is already fully compatible with what you want on your new SSD. So, with your HD installed in your external USB enclosure, boot from it (hold down the option key after the chime and pick the external drive), then clone the external onto the SSD after you partition the SSD to GUID Partition Table (click the Options..Button), one partition. Carbon Copy Cloner does the job for making a bootable clone; other software, such as Superduper does too. Assuming the SSD is big enough to receive the contents of the HD with room to spare, you're done.
Obviously it's also possible to do a fresh install of the OS you're already running and then use Setup Assistant to migrate your settings and files to the SSD. I've found, however, that some settings, such as Network configurations, can get lost that way, as can authorizations for software you've had to buy and register.

Can I use a solid state drive (SSD) with a G4 1 GHz powerbook? If so, how do I do it?

Hi:
Can I use a solid state drive (SSD) with a G4 1 GHz powerbook? If so, how do I do it? Thanks.
fromx001

fromx001 I believe you can use a SSD as internal drive, of course make sure to buy an ide/ata. There are all sorts of sizes up to 480 GB also in the ide/ata standard. You should however research carefully your purchase, as the performances of your SSD are going to have to rely on firmware "garbage collection", as the older operating systems haven't been written with SSD in mind.
Mac Man JW: some people depend on Classic as a brody said, other people need a phone modem from time to time, other people use the laptop in harsh environments, and at -15C and below, LCD screens easily crack and break; NOT the powerbook which has hot air towards the screen (and it's a machine that heats quite a lot). My alu Powerbook 12", which was *not* treated with velvet gloves, only once had a cracked screen: a cleaning lady had stepped over it (!!!!) no joke. And in normal / light use today, it is still pretty decent and usable.

TS1365 hi, would anyone know if I can i install a samsung 840 series 500gb ssd HD into a MacBookPro 2.2ghz??

hi, would anyone know if I can i install a samsung 840 series 500gb ssd HD into a MacBookPro 2.2ghz?
The store clerk said yes.
Much obliged for any helpful answers.
Thank yiou

If this is the one, it will!
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Samsung/MZ7PD512BW/
Ciao.

Does anyone know if running Photoshop thru a external SSD (using firewire) as a scratch disk, on a imac early 2008- make photoshop any faster doing tasks?

Has anyone tried this and if so, was there a noticable difference in photoshop doing its various tasks? Again, its a imac early 2008, and I looking to use a firewire to attach a Solid State Drive to use as the scratch disk. I am maxed out a 6gb ram.
Thanks

CanadianBear
KiltedTim's right of course. You seem to have adequate RAM.
I would ask you if this sluggishness is NEW? If so, what has changed that you can identify? Updates or upgrades? New software etc?
What kind of tasks? Any operation on a big image is processor heavy, but you have the RAM so scratch disk is the right direction. What is your 'History' preference in PShop? Keep that as small as you can afford to. Save often. Keep as few images open as possible - each image has its own History. Save often.
For scratch info on an image, choose that from the 'triangle' pop menu at the bottom of the document window. That seems a good way to tell if scratch disks are even at fault.
Happy Shopping
CCC

128GB Vertex 4 vs 500GB WD black as scratch disk

Which would be better as a scratch disk? The extra speed of an SSD or the extra capasity of the HDD?
I've tried to search around alot before posting this question, but i cant find good new information that directly answers this simple question.
My setup will be 128 agility 3 for OS and cache, 500GB Samsung spinpoint f3for media files and either ssd or hdd for scratch disk. I5-2500k@4,5Ghz and 16gb 1600mhz ram.

What is a scratch disk? It is used to write intermediate files, like the media cache files, the media cache database, the preview files and possibly the Windows pagefile.
SSD's have a nasty habit in that their write performance deteriorates over time untill they reach their 'stable state'. Trimming does not help here. Secondly, SSD's have a limited number of write cycles in contrast to conventional disks. Once that number of write cycles has been reached, the SSD is dead. Writing a lot of small files to an SSD shortens the life-span and makes it reach its 'stable state'performance very quickly. Not all SSD's are equal and I do not know how the Vertex4 does, but generally the performance degradation is sizable. The Agility3 is not very good in that aspect. This means that the performance gain from using an SSD for scratch disks is marginal at best. Instead of a single SSD, you may be better off with two conventional disks in raid0 for scratch. It will be equally fast, possibly even faster and last a lot longer than a SSD and may also be cheaper.
Do not be lured by the marketing hype of some SSD manufacturers about the fabulous writing speeds, sometimes claiming speeds of 400-500 MB/s. In practice and after reaching its 'stable state' is is more often in the order of 300 MB/s or even less. The Agility3 may even top off at around 200 MB/s. Your i5 CPU will have more limitations on your performance than the possible use of a SSD for scratch.

Hardware: SSD drives and scratch disks

Hi,
I am building a new system for Photoshop. Two quick questions:
1. I note in Adobe's system reqs it says Photoshop cannot be installed on flash-based storage devices. Does this include SSDs? Is there a genuine problem here (i.e. if my application drive is an SSD the PS won't work)?
2. I have not previously had a so-called "scratch" disk so I don't really know what it is or whether I need one, or more than one. What's the general advice here? - separate drive to the PS application drive? also separate to the Windows drive? How big? Will an SSD be a good choice for a scratch drive?
Thanks in advance,
Alastair

G'day,
In answer to your query SSDs work fine to install cs4 on bar the following I'm having.
I've built a new system using ssds.and is working fine bar one problem
Specs of the system is
I7 920 cpu, Asus P6t se mb, 12gb ram, 128gb ssd, 64gb ssd, 4gb raid 1+0 array onboard, nvidia geforcegtx260. I use the 128gb ssd as the os and programs drive. The raid is the data drive. All works brilliantly except when I set the 64gb ssd as the scratch disk the following happens
"Could not open a scratch file because the file is locked. Use the 'Properties' command in the Windows Explorer to unlock the file."
I hit OK and get this error -
"Could not initialize Photoshop because the file is locked. Use the 'Properties' command in the Windows Explorer to unlock the file."
Pressing ok then shuts the program and I need to reset cs4 prefernces and then it all works fine. OS is Win7 64 bit.
Now I have just got to try and fix this problem Anyone got suggestions?
Cheers
Onslow
Hmm, seems to have stopped doing this now after resetting the scratch to the ssd and then rebooting. All is now fine and wonderfully quick.

*Noob* Which of these would I use for a scratch disk? How much Ram?

Hello, I am fairly new to Photoshop as I have used Lightroom ever since I've been a photographer. I recently got into Photoshop with the cloud as well as layering multiple exposures together. I never KNEW anything about scratch disk, until yesterday.
First let me stress, please answer my questions in layman's terms. I search the net before I start a topic on a forum and I read a lot of answers that seem to be responding to people who have a general idea of what is already going on. Remember, I DO NOT. Here are my questions:
A:If the scratch disk acts like RAM, do I need to allow it to use any of my ram at all? If so, how much? I have two Macbook Pro's, they are the highest model Apple makes, both have SSD drives, Quad Core i7's, etc. I unchecked my Macbook hard drive and told it to use an external SSD drive that is plugged in via USB 3.0. Would it be better to use an HDD instead of SDD? I have lots of hard drives to choose from due to being a music producer.
B:When I exit the program does it delete all the data it created? This question is two fold, does it delete it regardless if I saved the project or not? If I save the project does it stay there? What if I delete the original photo, was the photo imported into photoshop upon camera raw?
C: Like question A, how much ram do I choose? I have 16GB of Ram in each of my MacBooks.

OK, I have now copied your hillbilly text and pasted it into a text editor to change the typeface so I can read it.
I'll try to address the lose ends here.
A:…I have two Macbook Pro's, they are the highest model Apple makes…
Please forgive me for not being impressed. I just happen to consider any laptop a sub-optimal choice for Photoshop photography work. My personal opinion. (Please don't ask me why.)
, both have SSD drives,… I unchecked my Macbook hard drive and told it to use an external SSD drive that is plugged in via USB 3.0. Would it be better to use an HDD instead of SDD?…
I assume you are talking about using the external drive as your primary scratch disk, not as your boot disk. That is the appropriate thing to do. HD or SSD will both do the job fine, as long as they're physically separate, dedicated Photoshop scratch disks.
Obviously the internal drive will be your boot disk. Adobe applications really like to reside on the boot disk, the drive where the OS resides.
B:When I exit the program does it delete all the data it created?
This question is two fold, does it delete it regardless if I saved the project or not?
If I save the project does it stay there? What if I delete the original photo, was the photo imported into photoshop upon camera raw?
NOTHING is ever imported into Photoshop, ever. You use Photoshop to open your files exactly where you put them in the Apple Finder. And you save them wherever you wish, in the Finder as well. Your images will always reside in the Finder.
You don't import files into Adobe Camera Raw either. You open them in or with ACR.
Of course you need to save your data, not only when you quit the application, but at frequent intervals while you're working on it. Nothing you saved will be deleted by Photoshop. How can you even conceive and ask such a question? ?? !
If you ever try to close a file or the application when you have open, unsaved files, the application will ask you for confirmation in an unmistakable way.
Your images will always reside in the Finder, wherever you put them.
Photoshop does not have the abominable "Libraries" scheme that made me detest Lightroom when I tried it. Nor does Photoshop hide your image files in "packages" like the even more abominable iPhoto does.
Please forget anything you may be accustomed to in Lightroom and/or iPhoto, and approach Photoshop with a fresh mind, respecting it like the granddaddy of image editors it is.
C: Like question A, how much ram do I choose? I have 16GB of Ram in each of my MacBooks.
Again, you don't "choose RAM", instead you select a percentage of dynamically changing Available Memory (not RAM; see above) to allow Photoshop to use. Leave at around 70%.
Please see the following post for an important tip.

Photoshop RAM versus scratch disk/cache use

I recently ugraded my Mac to a new (to me) Power Mac G5 Dual 2GHz with 4GB RAM and two HDDs, one with OSX at 500GB and the other with 250GB (currently empty).
I followed the Adobe recommendations on setting up Photoshop CS2 for performance. I have my cache and scratch disk as the second (250GB) disk and therefore a different volume to the operating system. This disk is currently empty. In the cache settings, Photoshop sees 3072MB of the 4GB memory as available to it, and I have set the amount that PSCS2 can use to 100% (as Adobe states this is OK if you have 4GB or more of RAM).
With nothing else running on the Mac, when I open a tiff image of around 70MB, I can see in the status line at the bottom of the image window that the Efficiency is sometimes 100% but often drops to below 90% and down to 75% when doing image manipulations, which means that the scratch disk is being used (Adobe states that the Efficiency should be 95-100% when all actions are being done in RAM). However, when I look at the RAM status, there is still 2.5GB free, so PSCS2 has obviously not used all the RAM available to it when it starts using the scratch disk. I can also see that activity on the 250GB drive occurs when I do these manipulations, so the scratch disk is being accessed rather than actions being done in RAM
The only time I see the available RAM figure reduce is when I open multiple images. If I open ten 70MB tiff files then the RAM usage goes up a lot.
So my question is, why does PSCS2 use the scratch disk almost immediately when I manipulate an image even when I have told it to use 100% of the available 3072MB of available RAM? Have I missed a setting somewhere?
Any help or guidance appreciated.

Hi Buko
Thank you for your response. I did work through the optimisation guidelines before posting my message. I guess it is more about understanding why PSCS2 used the scratch disk when there is over 2GB of memory available, but I accept that it does what it does for good reason.
Could you let me know what the partitioning of my scratch disk will achieve? I did not see that in the optimisation guidelines, but I will definitely give it a try. I am interested to now what is actually does.
Thanks again, much appreciated.
Simon

Photoshop CS6 scratch disk on hard drive or SSD?

I've purchased a Windows 7 PC with 16 MB RAM, 2 terabytes and a 250 GB SSD. I'm going to load Photoshop on the SSD and the OS on the hard drive. Where should the scratch disk go?

It's a bit tough to answer, as you have not described how you'll be using your system overall. Are you going to be doing almost exclusively Photoshop work with it or are you looking for good all-around performance?
What brand and model SSD is it that you have, specifically? Generally speaking, if it's a modern model SSD with wear-leveling features in its internal controller, and with the other givens you mentioned, you will probably want to use the SSD for scratch, as SSD throughput is very high (hundreds of megabytes per second). With SSD throughput levels, when Photoshop starts using its scratch space heavily the performance hit is much less severe than with an HDD. There is also not nearly as much concern with an SSD about dedicating the drive to the task, as even if there are other activities on the drive the near-zero latency means that SSD supports multitasking much better.
However, if you feel you'll never exceed 250GB for OS and applications (i.e., you're going to keep a relatively simple system), using the SSD for operating system and apps alike might be a better approach. In that case there won't be enough space also for Photoshop scratch.
Just keep in mind, when planning your "this goes here, that goes there" distribution that Windows and its apps are really most comfortable with EVERYTHING running on drive C:. That's not to say it's a necessity, just that things tend to work more smoothly in that setup. Given that, you might actually consider getting a second SSD and making a RAID 0 array for drive C: with plenty of space available. That's the approach I took (in my case with four SSDs).
-Noel

Additional SSD as Scratch Disk?

I have the NEW MacPro which is fast & virtually flawless. I am a photoshop power user (VERY large files), and am thinking that an additional (external) SSD drive dedicated to use as a Photoshop Scratch drive, should be extremely fast, and save wear & tear on the internal drive. SSD's are more than twice as fast as a top Thunderbolt drive. And as a Scratch Disk the low capacity to cost won't be a factor.
Opinions from other PShop power users? Anyone already doing this?
Thanks!

Yes, read up on the tips here:
http://www.macperformanceguide.com
OWC Thunderbay
http://macperformanceguide.com/Thunderbolt-cable-Optical30m.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-OWC-Thunderbay4-SSD-RAID0.html
You are not going to 'wear and tear' as SSDs have been tested to hold up with 300TB and still going.
http://techreport.com/review/25889/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-500tb-update

SSD as capture scratch disk?

Given that SSD disk aren't that big in size yet - does it work to have a SSD disk as capture scratch disk (DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO HD)?

DVCPro50 and HD are relatively low load codecs. I can edit multiple streams of 720p24 easily from a good quality sata drive.
It seems to me there is no real advantage for capture. It probably makes more sense to use one as the system drive.
x

I'm using PSCS6 on a 500GB SSD. Do I still reach a better performance by adding a scratch disk?

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