RAPTOR 74GB Boot & PS Scratch Disk?

Hi,
I've just bought a 74GB Raptor and a Maxtor MaXLine III 300GB.
My intention is to use the RAPTOR as the boot drive for my applications and the Maxtor as the main storage for all my files. The internal 250GB stock drive will be moved to an enclosure and used as a backup.
1. How effective would the RAPTOR be as both a boot drive AND scratch disk for Photoshop ?
2. I know that as a drive fills up the efficiency declines. Would partioning the RAPTOR be an option. Perhaps 10-15GBs for the scratch disk?
3. Does anyone know where I can get my hands on one of these?
http://www.cooldrives.com/sata-to-firewire-enclosure-aluminum.html
I live in Ireland and Cool Drives don't ship internationally. I've scoured the web without luck. Any SATA to firewire enclosures that I've found that are available to me arethree times the price of the Cool Drive.
Quad   Mac OS X (10.4.2)   2.5GB RAM

I did a 'Google'.
"You can assign scratch disk(s) in the Preferences: Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks screen. It’s possible to assign up to four hard disks, or partitions, and Photoshop will see them as one large storage space for the temporary file. Photoshop supports up to 64EB (an exabyte [EB] is equal to 1 billion gigabytes) of scratch-disk space—more than sufficient for most needs!
Regardless of the number of hard disks you assign, make sure the minimum size is three to five times the RAM allocated to Photoshop. Furthermore, the hard drive should be fast, and if it’s partitioned, the first partition should be assigned. Do not assign removable media, such as a Zip drive, or a network drive as a scratch disk. If you assign dedicated partitions that do not store any other files, de-fragging should not be required."
So I've decided to create a partion on my 300GB Maxtor of 20GB. The max RAM that PS can use is 4GB so 5 times that is 20GB. I currently habe 2.5 B RAM which I will increase to 4.5GB in the near furure. The Maxtor has had good reviews for it's speed so that fulfils the other criteria. Ideally I'd like to use a 36GB Raptor as a scratch disk and I may well do that sometime in the future using a PCI card. My only concern about them is that they affect SLEEP. But that's something I'll think about in 6 months time or so. In the meantime I'll back up religiously to the old 250GB stock drive. I had partitions on my old G4 and they never gave me a problem. In fact they got me out of trouble a few times. So 1 partition doesn't concern me to much.
I'm not a pro photographer but I am a keen amateur who does a little bit here and there for money. Mostly I just want an optimized system at a reasonable cost. The Quad will be my computer for the 4 years at least so I want to ensure that it has all it needs to keep me and it happy.
Thanks to you all for your advice. You can't put a price on your support.
Quad   Mac OS X (10.4.2)   Basic Set Up

Similar Messages

  • Raptor as boot disk or storage/scratch?

    Could anyone please advise me? The 250 GB Western Digital Caviar hard drive I installed in my first generationn dual 2GB G5 recently and partitioned for static storage and scratch disk for Photoshop definitely runs slowly. I'm thinking of moving it into an enclosure and replacing it with another. Many people recommend the 74MB 10,000rmp Western Digital Raptor. Anyone here got any experience of it please?
    Should i make it my boot disk and move the applications and OSX onto it, or should I keep my Seagate Barracuda 160MB original drive as the OS/boot/application disk and use the Raptor for a scratch disk for Photoshop, or use the seagate as the secondary disk? What's the best
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    Also what's the best solution for an enclosure for converting the WD Caviar into an external drive?
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    I didn't know that about CS2 (which is the version I'm running). Thanks for that. I have 3.5 GB RAM, so it runs quite fast anyway, but a few tasks still take a little while.
    Thanks for info re the hitachi too. I'll look at that. This has been really helpful. i wanted to flag it as helpful, but the option has gone and I have only a solved button.
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    utilizes memory far more than the hard drive - thus a
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    That said, I have used the same 74 GB Raptor in my
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  • Can't choose Raptor as boot disk

    Just got my BTO Mac Pro yesterday. I installed a 74GB Raptor to format as a startup disk, but the OS X installer says I can't boot from that drive and thus can't install OS X on it. Is it because it is only 1.5Gb/s, does it have to be 3Gb/s? I can't find any documentation on this site for boot disk requirements.

    There was a problem with the original firmware in the 150GB Raptor and booting from a stripped RAID on G5s. I know that isn't your situation, but these things can be tricky.
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    The WD Raptor 74GB - which firmware and how old? did you use it in your G5?
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    I'll have to look to see if it has only the old 4-pin molex power plug or if it has the new SATA power connector as well (most WD drives have both).
    Did you go into Disk Utility first to format the drive?
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    First thing I would do, and worked sometimes on G5s, was to just reboot and then try again as sometimes a drive would then be available.
    Are you doing an ERASE and INSTALL? and is there anything on the drive now?
    If it is new, make sure it is the latest, and WD has also now come out with a new 74GB based on the 150GB model, that has 16MB cache.
    Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD
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  • Mac Version of PS6 Will Not Launch if Scratch Disk is Not Set to Boot Drive

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    Curt good idea but no go. This is a fresh install of PSCS6. I ran the Apple Disk Utility three times and Disk Warrior on the boot drive. If I leave the Scratch Disk set to the boot drive no issues, only if I change the order of the scratch disk or if I do not have the boot drive selected as a possible option for the scratch disk.
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  • Boot Drive(s), Scratch Disks, eSATA chipsets

    It was explained I shouldn't have posted this where a question had already been answered. Let me try again...
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    I meant to reiterate the 3.75TB Fusion D500P is connected via eSATA, the video camera is connected via firewire.
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  • Partitioning the Harddrive for a scratch disk for CS1 & CS2

    Hello all...
    I need to see if there is a way to partition the harddrive on the work macs for the use of a scratch disk. We have a dual 2.0 G5 and a Quad.
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    Never partition the boot drive. Even if it is used for scratch (and even if you set another drive for primary scratch the boot drive will still be used some). Keep your boot drive free of everything else except the system and applications.
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    You might want to use WD's 10K 150GB Raptor for boot drive (and yes, it works just fine on the DC/Quad G5s). The 10K 74GB Raptor makes a nice disk also and could also be used for scratch disks in a RAID. Use your original OEM drive just for local data.
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  • Scratch Disk & Photoshop

    What would be the best way to set up the scratch disk when using photoshop? I have 2 additional 250 GB hard drives set up as Raid 0 in addition to the 250 GB system HD. Is it best to use the Raid as primary SD? Partition the Raid and use that partition as SD? Can you even partition a Raid HD?

    There is a new and updated Photoshop Test utility to help benchmark the time for various steps. There is also a pdf guide Photoshop Acceleration Basics
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  • My opinion on WD Raptor as boot drive

    After doing much research, I decided to buy the WD 150 ADFD and use it as a boot drive in my MacPro 2.66. In the other drive bays, I have two WD RE320's as RAID 0, and a single WD 500 for storage.
    The reason I'm posting is not to specifically ask a question, but to give my honest opinion on whether a single Raptor makes for a good boot drive or not. As I did my research on the web, I found the general consensus that the Raptor was the drive to buy if you could afford it. The noise was supposed to be not that noticiable, and the speed vs lack of storage was a reasonable trade-off. It's supposed to be the premium SATA drive! As it turns out, I found that consensus to be wrong, and my trust in others opinions is going to cost me a 15% restocking fee. I bought a Raptor last week and have been trying it out over the holidays. I'm sending it back tomorrow and eating the restocking fee that Newegg charges for returns.
    The reason I'm returning the drive is because, first off, the speed is not that significant when you consider the premium you are paying for it. The Raptor shaved about 3 seconds off my boot time. Big deal (sarcasm). Applications open maybe a second or two faster (big deal again), though it's hard to tell on my MacPro because it's so fast to begin with. As for general "snappiness" to the OS and general computing, I found NO discernable difference between the Raptor and the stock Seagate that shipped with the computer. Working with Final Cut Pro, I didn't notice any difference in performance and that is my primary application. The RAID 0 is probably having more positive effect on rendering than the Raptor. Then there is the noise... first let me say that the Raptor is quiet when it's at idle. I have no issue with that. The problem for me is that when the head starts seeking, the sound is jarring. Like microwave popcorn? Tadadadadadada...tick....tick....tick....tadadadadada.
    What makes the seek noise so bad is that the computer is normally so quiet by comparison. So, if I'm sitting in my office and it's really quiet, all I hear is the faint sound of my X1900 fan. Then the Raptor kicks in and it's like finger nails going across a chalk board. Okay... maybe that an exaggeration, but it really is distracting! I also really hate when the Raptor just does a random loud click when your surfing the web or not doing anything disk intensive. Like, as I'm writing this post... click.......(silence)................... click, click...............(silence)... you get the idea. None of my other drives do that.
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    I'm sending my Raptor back soon as I get an RMA and going back to the stock Seagate until I figure out what else to use. Maybe the WD SE 320 Caviar or the Maxline Pro? Something around 320GB for OS and applications only and a Windows partition.
    Any suggestions?
    Thanks for reading. Your comments are appreciated!
    Al

    To be honest, I haven't run extensive scientific
    tests but the ones I did perform didn't show much of
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    timeline. Next, I booted off the stock Seagate 160
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    had cloned the Seagate from the Raptor using
    SuperDuper!). Anyway, I ran the render on the same
    file and it took exactly the same amount of time. 4
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    Again, am I missing something here?
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    I'm not sure about your expectation of seeing FCP perform better in your test though. I wouldn't expect there to be any improvement there. Rendering speed tends to be limited by processing rather than disk speed for a start. Where a fast drive helps is when applications need fast reads and writes. Writing a 100GB self-contained movie from the FCP timeline to some external storage wont be speeded up no matter what system drive you have (unless the original footage is stored on the OS disk of course!). The speed will be dictated by the drive your writing to and the drive you are reading from. Unless you have set your scratch disk as your boot drive or footage is stored there or you're writing to it then the boot drive will have no effect.
    Like everything in computer land, whether you need that extra power, speed, size etc always erm... "depends". having just 5% extra kick might be the difference between a realtime preview or a render for eg.
    I agree with a "vibe" I am picking up from you though: that all those reviews and user comments on the web can be very misleading. If you've spent $50 more on something then its not easy to admit (even to yourself) that it wasn't ~really~ worth it. Once you see the quoted benchmarks for yourself and the 2sec reduction at boot most folks will feel the purchase was worth it. Will it make you work better? Not really. I went from a G3 B/W mac to a MacPro but the music I make is no more jolly than it was before
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  • When I try to use the internal hard drive as a scratch disk I get this error "unable to set scratch disk- the selected directory is on write protect or non-writable media.  Any ideas on how to fix this.  It only happens in fcp.

    When I try to use the internal hard drive as a scratch disk I get this error "unable to set scratch disk- the selected directory is on write protect or non-writable media.  Any ideas on how to fix this.  It only happens in fcp.

    By internal, I assume you're referring to your systems (boot) drive. Is it, by chance, a partitioned dive?
    Also…although many people successfully use their systems drives as scratch disks, over time you'll have better results using a dedicated drive for your media.
    Good luck.
    Russ

  • Photoshop CS2 scratch disk error

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    When I set the scratch disk to the 2nd drive and restart PS, it gives an error on launch that PS can't initialize the disk because it doesn't exist. Well golly, it's right on the destkop, passes the Apple hardware test and disk utility tests and works fine for my 30 gigs of iTunes and all that good stuff. It's been formatted with Apple's disk utility and has one standard Mac OS Extended journaled partition.
    My boot drive is partitioned with Bootcamp and has an NTFS partition. Of course I am not selecting that partition with PS but just wondering if that's an additional monkey wrench.

    Somewhere in the foggy last couple months, I know that I have read that before.
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  • IDVD scratch disk

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    Hi
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  • Can I use my old g5 tower as a scratch disk for my Macbook Pro for Photoshop?

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    Hm. It sounds like you know what you are talking about, and apparently I don't. I was just going to plug in a firewire cable to both and hoped that magically scratch disk would appear as an option for my tower.
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  • Adobe Photoshop Scratch Disk Full/Startup Disk Full error - PLEASE HELP

    Dear ALL,
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    I am thinking of running the Disk Utility from the Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and doing a Verify Disk and Verify Disk Permissions followed by Repair Disk Permissions. I will be logged into the machine whilst doing this. Is there any danger in this as I have read elsewhere that I need to do this from a bootable volume. If that is the case how do I create a bootable disk/cd? If not then what is the cure to my Disk Full as surely there is now nearly 50% FREE!!!!!
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    PS will always use the boot disk for scratch to some extent even with an alternate primary scratch disk.
    Be sure to turn off Spotlight as it causes problems.
    4GB of RAM would be nice, I understand small files don't work well if there is more than 4GB RAM but large files will. OS X uses free RAM as cache and RAM disk before using disk drives.
    How much RAM is allocated to PS? More RAM would help.
    A dedicated lean boot drive helps. Install just what is needed for your work, use a separate drive for data, and yet another RAID volume for scratch.
    When in doubt, backup with SuperDuper, and do an erase and then restore. Always backup before repairing; and never, ever, use an old version of Tiger CD/DVD - like 10.4.2 on 10.4.7/.8. Use "fsck" instead, or your emergency boot drive.
    Also, give Applejack a shot and delete the cache folders and swap files from time to time to keep a system humming. CS/CS2 and Tiger benefit nicely from more RAM.

  • Canon camcorder + scratch disk questions

    I have a Canon Optura 50 (I now know that was not the best choice!). But, given what I have and I can't buy a new camcorder for a while, I would like some advice and clarification.
    I have been following the thread on dropped frames and the do's and don'ts of internal vs external hard drives (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?forumID=936&threadID=680582). The consensus seems to be that (a) it is not a good idea to use the internal drive as the scratch disc, and (b) best to use an external FW drive and daisy chain the camera to FW drive to computer.
    With the Canon I take it I cannot daisy chain it due to it's FW hardware quirks of not liking anything else on the FW bus at the same time as video capture, correct?
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    With the Canon I take it I cannot daisy chain it due to it's FW hardware quirks of not liking anything else on the FW bus at the same time as video capture, correct?
    I have my Canon daisy chained through my external HD with no problems. Ever. So I am forced to believe either I have been blessed with enternal luck (knock on woodcrest) or convince myself the consensus that there is a specific problem with Canon cameras being daisy-chained has been the direct effect of pure coincidence and speculation. One will truly never know if a specific set-up will work until they try it out for themselves so go ahead and daisy chain that Canon away and see if you have problems.
    And as far as using an external disk as your HD goes...
    If you have the FC Express User Maual, take a look at Chapter 12 titled "Determining Your Hard Disk Storage Options" starting on page 153. If you don't have the manual feel free to check it out online here on Apple's website. Be aware it's a 26.5 MB link so it might take awhile to load but I'll highlight the juicy stuff for ya:
    The manual states:
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    Not saying the other way isn't possible, it's just not recommended. If Apple doesn't recommend it then I won't regardless of status.

  • *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.

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