Scratch Disk, Media Drive, etc Question.

I just got a new Seagate 7200.11, 32 mb cache, etc hd for xmas. I have the stock 7200.10 in bay 1. From the readings, I've concluded that the 7200.11 is faster. Should I use the faster HD as my startup disk and run programs; or should I use it as my media/scratch for photoshop and premiere? Size isn't an issue, I just want to know which configuring would be better performance-wise?

I would buy two more 7200.11s if you like them.
Boot drive should be fast(-est)
So, too, should scratch. Often people use 1-8 drives in RAID for scratch.
You need a data drive. And external to backup projects as you work.
And, CS3, depending on file size and work flow, can benefit from 4-8GB of memory, more if you keep and work in multiple applications throughout the day. Memory will help reduce the amount of disk I/O for scratch, and you never want the boot drive to be used by CS for scratch (and you need to disable Spotlight on scratch as well).
Seagate drives have been troublesome and slow, taking a big hit on small file I/O writes especially. Taking 5-9 hrs to zero a drive when 1 hr should have been more than enough.
750GB drives offer better price/performance than 1TB models. And the Seagate ES (Enterprise) line got poor rating in benchmark reviews from Techreport and StorageReview recently.

Similar Messages

Scratch disk and other setup questions

Hello, I am a long time Premiere user but have never been involved with the setup. I have decided to start doing personal video editing on my gaming computer and have run into some questions.
The biggest one I have is with the scratch disk setup. I've read the help doc about 10 times and googled every combination of terms I can think of but am still unsure how I should set these for my setup.
I have Premiere Pro CS5 installed on my C:, which is a 128 GB SSD
For storage I have 4 1TB drives in Raid 5, so 2.72 TB total storage.
How do I want to set up my scratch disks for best possible performance?
Question 2: This might be related to scratch disk setup, I'm not sure, but something I have always wondered. Which disk should I save my projects to in this configuration? Does it matter? Then, do I want to render my final video to that same folder or to another disk?
Question 3: I currently have a GTX 460 graphics card and am enjoying the benefits of CUDA acceleration. I have been looking at adding a second in SLI for gaming purposes, but have read that the Mercury Playback Engine is not compatible with SLI. Does this mean that it will still just work with one card and I will see no benefit in premiere, or that all CUDA acceration will cease?
Thanks guys, I really appreciate the help.

Alright, so I have the hdd's in the case and am setting up where to place everything, but each of my drives is different, so I am hoping someone can suggest best practice on which drives should hold what. I can rearrange any drive to suit any purpose you guys would suggest, but here is what I currently have set up:
C: - 128 GB SATA III SSD
D: - 150 GB 10k VelociRaptor
E: - 250 GB Caviar Black
F: - 4x 1 TB Spinpoint F4 7200 RPM in RAID 5
Here is how I am currently planning on using these drives:
C: - OS, Programs
D: - Media, Projects
E: - Previews, Exports
F: - Pagefile, Media Cache
When I am finished with a project I move the exported file onto my media server, so that is why I set the export onto the smaller drive and media cache onto the RAID.
Does this look good or would you guys suggest a different orientation for better performance?
And one other question, this time regarding RAM. I currently have 6 GB of DDR3, 3 x 2 GB. I have been reading all about how moving up to 24 GB would be very beneficial, and since it really isn't all that expensive, I am planning on doing so. My question is that, I have watched the task manager while rendering and exporting my videos and I've only ever seen RAM usage hit 1.8 GB. I wondered why it didn't get close to using all 6, but didn't worry about it too much. But now that I am hearing 24 would be helpful, I am wondering if I have something set up wrong that is stopping Premiere from using all my RAM?
Thank you guys so much for the help.

Scratch disk media editing vs. internal

Hello
My current setup is Win8 Pro, i7-990x Extreme, 24Gb kit, and a Quadro2K. I've been editing Full HD nicely in realtime for the last two years. I have a single bootup SSD drive for the OS and programs, and two 2TB drives - one mirrors the other. I had to go this route because my initial 2TB RAID 0 Glyph had died and since then I've been skeptic of that protocol regardless of the fact that's how we were rigged in film school. I do know however know that my old RAID Glyph setup loaded video (thumbnails) significantly faster than now. I have gone through numerous ways to RAID my motherboard but without success.
So I was curious of any other hard drive configurations that significantly improve editing time and perhaps rendering. Should I forget about my rig containing big TB drives and simply downgrade in capacity to two more SSD's like the following:
Boot Drive 1 60 SSD - Win8 Pro
Drive 2 - 240GB SSD media
Drive 3 - 240GB SSD media
Drive 4 - 2 TB backup
Also are there any benefits in working in a multiple SSD setup if I plan to edit some files that are on (let's say) Drive 2 while Premiere Pro is running on boot from Drive 1? Or would it be better to have one bigger SSD like Crucial's M500 that's running the OS and working on media files from one SSD architecture? Retrieving files from another SSD internally is also a scratch protocol is it not?

Well, if you can afford SDDs with enough capacity for your needs, such a system would fly with disk loads. Many editors would find 512GB (the largest common size for SSDs) far too small for the Media drive. You may also want more room for the Exports and Cache drives as well, depending on how many simultaneous projects you have going on, so it might not be a bad idea to use those 2TB drives in the mix.
Whether SSD or HDD, that config will spread the load out pretty well so that you're rarely reading and writing to the same drive at the same time.

Best Volume Format to choose for Scratch Disk?

Hello All,
Have an older internal HD (I'm assuming it's SCSI) in my MDD g4 (an 80Gb) and am planning on using it as a scratch disk for Photoshop/etc - what is the best format to choose (Journaled, Extended, etc) when making a scratch disk drive? Or does it even really matter, since there won't be data per se going to and from there?
Thanks!

it's actually a 76.57 Gb (on the desktop info) HD - I referred to it as 80Gb because it was the original HD that came with the MDD when purchased. Here's what System Profiler gives me:
IBM-IC35L090AVV207-1:
Capacity: 76.69 GB
Model: IBM-IC35L090AVV207-1
Revision: V2HBA63A
Serial Number: VNVC33G3G5RGBT
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 1
Socket Type: Internal
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
Scratch Disk:
Capacity: 76.57 GB
Available: 76.53 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s3
Mount Point: /Volumes/Scratch Disk

Easily switch between scratch disk locations?

I have a project which I need to edit and it's going to take up a lot of room as it's shot throughout the summer and will contain hours of footage. I already have a hard drive devoted to all of my current editing projects (lets call that Drive 1) however this new project will be so big it needs another drive entirely. I have installed a hard drive (Drive 2) into my Mac Pro just for this new project.
I know by going into FCP > System Settings I can designate a new scratch disk on Drive 2 however I have a question.
I want to upload this project to Drive 2 at various points throughout the summer but at the same time I still need to upload and access my other final cut pro projects and content on Drive 1.
How can I easily switch between the capture scratch disk locations and make sure that content is being uploaded and rendered in the right location? I want to make sure I do this right before I add any new content to Drive 2.
Hope this makes sense.

Thanks for your reply.
So if I want to upload, edit etc content to Drive 1, I just unselect all of the Drive 2 preferences in FCP > System Settings and vice versa Then when I want to use them again I just re-select them?

"Scratch Disk Full" in Photoshop CS3, 30MB Free"

I've been all over the net and can't find an answer.
I have only one drive (I will be fixing that problem tomorrow), a 250GB on my PowerMac G5. Disk Info says there are 50 GB Available. Photoshop preferences agree. Still, I cannot crop a lousy 4MB file.
Viewed and repaired permissions - wasn't much there, actually. Got Onyx, ran everything I could (although I don't really understand all of it), no change.
I am a professional photographer, many large (over 30MB) files, but I never ran into anything like this. I read that Photoshop runs into fragments and goes no further, even if there is empty space on the disk. At the same time I read that Tiger defragments automatically. I dunno.
Activity Monitor says I have plenty of memory.
Am I looking at a total disk formatting adventure?

Bob,
Activity Monitor says I have plenty of memory.
"Memory" refers to RAM, whereas the "scratch disk" is your hard drive. 50 GB available before you start working with Photoshop files may seem a lot, but when you open large files, it is not that much. It may really run full. If the same is the case with a little 4 MB file (without having just worked on a 30 MB file during the same session), this is really weird.
Check your disk space with Activity Montor and select +Hard Disk load+ (or something like this; I don't work on an English OS). CPU > Memory > Hard Disk Activity > *Hard Disk Load* > Network.
Have you got an external hard drive with more than 50 GB free that you could use as a scratch disk test drive instead of your internal?
Peter

Can't open tif file. "Scratch disks are full"

Version: Photoshop CS5 12.0.4 64 bit
Scratch Disk: 6.67 GB of available space on my scratch disk (C Drive). I've allocated 90% (2686 MB of my available 2984 MB of RAM to Photoshop).
File I'm trying to open: 39 MB tiff file
I have nothing else open in Photoshop and no other applications open. Even so, I get the message "Could not complete your request because the scratch disks are full" when I try to open the file ... yet when Photoshop itself opens, it still claims to have 6.67 gigs of available space.
The file I'm trying to open is a 39 meg tiff with a few smart objects in it.
I just opened a 23 meg tiff with a few smart objects in it, with no problems.
I just opened a 39 meg (same size) psd (no smart objects), with no problems.
Why does this 39 meg tiff file cause Photoshop to say the scratch disk is full?
Thanks in advance for your help!

Welcome to the forum.
As others have stated, the problem is most likely just a lack of HDD real estate, and as also mentioned, if your Windows Virtual Memory (Page File) is dynamically managed (the default setting),you probably have even less, that what is being reported.
One major consideration is that a HDD begins to lose performance, when it reaches about 70%, and this is cumulative, in that the closer one gets to capacity, the slower the performance. Also, as one approaches capacity, the liklihood of a failure increases.
Treat yourself to an additional HDD, clean up your boot disk, and many things will improve.
Good luck,
Hunt

Scratch Disk Full While Cropping Image In Photoshop

I saw another post on this, but they were able to resolve their issue on their own. I still think I have an issue.
I have a Macbook Pro (80GB harddrive where I've only used 51GB). A couple of days ago I upgraded the RAM from 512MB to 2GB. I recently used Adobe Photoshop CS (ver.8.0), and while attempting to crop an image (22.8MB), an error pops up saying: "could not complete your request because scratch disks are full".
Now my scratch disk, I have the following:
1st: Startup
2nd: Hard drive
3rd: none
4th: none
So, with this set up (and even if I make the image smaller), their is not enough scratch disk space. I have plenty of space in my harddrive. Wondering if the recent upgrade of RAM has anything to do w/ this situation. Anyway, any advice is much appreciated.
Thank you in advance.
C.

Bob,
Activity Monitor says I have plenty of memory.
"Memory" refers to RAM, whereas the "scratch disk" is your hard drive. 50 GB available before you start working with Photoshop files may seem a lot, but when you open large files, it is not that much. It may really run full. If the same is the case with a little 4 MB file (without having just worked on a 30 MB file during the same session), this is really weird.
Check your disk space with Activity Montor and select +Hard Disk load+ (or something like this; I don't work on an English OS). CPU > Memory > Hard Disk Activity > *Hard Disk Load* > Network.
Have you got an external hard drive with more than 50 GB free that you could use as a scratch disk test drive instead of your internal?
Peter

Macbook Pro with Dual hard drives. Scratch Disk, Memory 64bit, Raid, Set Up Questions.

Hello, this is my first post.
I just upgraded from the original 2006 17" Macbook Pro to a refurbished 13" Macbook Pro 2.53GHZ 4GB Ram (2009 model).
I bought the MCE Tech Optibay and installed it (if you dont know anything about it, ask me, its amazing.) So now I have 2x 500GB 7200RPM Seagate hard drives installed.
I am running Snow Leopard, CS3, Lightroom 1.4.
I have the main hard drive set up with Snow Leopard and all the Applications. I keep all my files on external firewire 800 drives, except files I am currently working on.
The second hard drive is set up as a scratch disk for Photoshop CS3 and that is it.
I am looking to upgrade to CS5 and Lightroom 3 here within this month or so. Or if I get anxious, tomorrow, haha.
I want to know the best setup I can do with my current set up with CS3 and for my future setup with CS5.
Any info will appreciated.
-Would some kind of raid set up with my internal drives be better? How does raid work with scratch disks?
-If I upgrade to 8GB memory in my macbook pro, would I even see a difference in performance if I didn't have a scratch disk? Since CS5 and Snow Leopard can use more memory in 64bit.
I think thats all I have on my brain right now. I may have more questions, or I can guarantee I will have more later.
Thanks alot.

First the scratch. Like you said, most everyone has a different take on scratch discs but I'd guess you're wasting one heck of a lot of hard drive space using all 500 GB for Scratch, did I read that right? If I did read it correctly YES, partition it and get some use out of it!!
I've got a unibody MBP 2.93GHz, OS 10.5.8, CS3 & PS 5 (running in 32bit mode), and 8 gigs of ram. I've partitioned the one 300 GB drive so 50GB is scratch, the other partition is for OS, & Apps, and documents (images).
I use LR 2 first than export to PS 5 to finish up. My photos get to be 300MB to 500MB in size and both versions of PS work on this setup just fine. Using PS 5 in 64 bit mode is faster opening files but NON of my plugin's are 64 bit yet, that's why I'm still stuck in 32 bit mode.
Not knowing what size or kind of files you work on makes giving advice a bit tough but try setting the status indicator (don't know the right name for it) in the bottom left corner of any PS open file to "Efficiency" and watch what happens when you process your files. I rarely see mine drop below 90%, I've got the usable RAM in PS Prefs set to it's max suggested, cut way back on History and Cache.
Can't wait for NIK and others to offer their plugin in 64 bit, later this year is what I was told.
There used to be an old "rule of thumb" with old version of PS about Scratch disc size. I don't remember exactly but it may have been 3 to 5 times the size of your biggest file??
Good luck, Alan

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

Setting up RAID 0 and scratch disk from blank drives?

Folks,
Howdy again from NC. I've been setting up an AMD Phenom II 955 to handle PPro CS5 as well as possible, within limits. I built four of these machines for my math class, and am going to give CS5 a go on one of them before caving in and migrating my Production Premium to an i7/X58 platform. Maybe I'll get lucky and find this computer works acceptably with PPro, especially if I transcode my T2i AVCHD footage (likely Neoscene).
I put three new disks into my build yesterday and would like some pointers on setting them up, if I may ask. I have read through a number of posts on this, but don't find direct answers, unfortunately. I've never set up a RAID and want to get it right.
I have two Caviar Black drives for my RAID and a Hitachi Deskstar for my scratch disk. The Blacks are new out of the pack and the Hitachi has had zeros written to the drive. How to begin?
Anticipated issues:
* Do I need to format the drives in a certain way? I had planned on going into Disk Management and setting up a volume on each as my first move. Right now, they aren't even recognized under My Computer. Under Disk Management, all three show as unallocated.
From memory, I right click in the unallocated space and select an option for setting up the volume. Prior to this I only used straight-up drives, no RAID, and after writing zeros to a drive selected "New Simple Volume". It seems to me this is the move to make on the single scratch disk.
But how about the two RAIDed drives? We also have options to set up as "New Striped Volume" or "New Spanned Volume". If the answer is to set as as "New Striped Volume" for the RAID 0 I have planned, do I do this before or after installing the RAID software?
* My documentation for setting up the RAID on my motherboard doesn't indicate when to change my BIOS setting for the two SATA channels from IDE to RAID. Should I do this before or after running the software to set up the RAID? Do I need to go into the software setup with the two SATA channels already configured as RAID?
Right now, all SATA channels are configured as IDE.
* After getting my disks set up, I'd like to optimize my system for editing (turning off unwanted features, etc.). I've been looking all over for a link to an outside site I had bookmarked from a prior post, but lost it on re-install. Anyone recall what the favored link was? It started as a long page of instructions in simple typeface.
In the end, my disks are as follows (unless someone makes a case to use them differently):
OS/Programs - 1TB Caviar Green. Yes, I know the deal on green drives, but I needed to use this drive somewhere. I figured using it as the OS drive would be the best spot for the slowest drive. Maybe I botched this and should have used the following drive for the OS? I had transfer rates in mind and thought the Scratch drive should be faster?
Scratch - 750GB Deskstar 7K100 series. This drive was tops 18 months back when I bought it.
RAID 0 - Two 640GB Caviar Blacks (32 meg cache, twin processors). A bit older in the Black lineup, but the drive charts show them working quickly.
To ask one dumb last question, which will really show my newbieness, I use the scratch drive for page files (right? and what else?) and the RAID for holding any media to be worked upon and for encoding the final project?
I've been reading on this forum for over a month and am amazed that as I have the drives for a RAID, I can't find good links to tell me what to do. I know I am asking redundant questions here but have already spent two hours with the search engine and am only getting tangential anwers (ha! math joke).
Sorry to be asking such newbie questions all over again, but my luck with the search engine hasn't been so good of late. Maybe Bill's idea of creating a sticky section for common questions is a good idea.

about 75-80% of the systems we ship, ship with this config (others would be bigger arrays or no array)
1)OS
2) project drive 2 x raid 0
3) render to/export drive 2 x raid 0
4) back up (pick your poison)
while i cant speak to the older WDs (we have not used them for 3-4 yrs until now)
i can tell you with Seagate and now WD we have not seen the issue that applies to this inRaid 0
we are aware of the timeout issue this happens with controller cards and seagate or WD with large raid 5/6
simple answer use enterprise drives for raid 5/6
if you look at all the external raid resellers Sonnet etc they all use enterprise drives (mostly seagate)
so do we for large raids.
(drobo does not so buyer beware (green), we like to sell drobo without drives in it and use ours)
again BACK UP do not assume your raid 3/5/6/10/1 whatever is bullet proof, trust me its not
so even if you have a loss it should be at best nominal
something i dont think i have seen mentioned enough either
the single most common cause of drive failure (or any component failure) is Dirty Power!
dirty power can be spikes but are usually brown outs (very common in large older cities) or even low voltage coming into the home/office
this is the most common.
rather than a clean 120v you could see it as low as 105v
the other is being on a circuit with a large appliance.
ever see your lilghts flicker when the AC kicks on?
buy a good inline filter UPS. add 20% MORE wattage than your power supply
dont forget to add accessories LCDs, Audio interfaces, speakers/studio monitors etc.
Scott
ADK

Please help me setup CS4 scratch disks etc

Hey everyone
I just bought CS4 Premiere Pro and I really want to set it up correctly.
I am editing 1080p AVCHD video from my Canon HG21 HD Camera, but I need to find out how to properly set up scratch disks etc.
I guess you have the program running on one hard drive, the media that you are editing on another, and a scratch disk on another hard drive?
I don't totally understand how to set this up.
My current rig is an i7 920, 6gb 1600 mhz ram, 4870x2, 3 WD HDD's. The HDD the program is installed on is a 7200 rpm drive but I think the others are 5400? I'll have to check that out.
Thanks for your help.

Hi Harm,
Thanks for your reply! I just checked and all three of them are 7,200 RPM drives, I will set my projects and scratch disks as you advised.
Also just a quick question, I am using the following preset on Premiere Pro CS4 with my Canon HG21 Camera, but how will I know for sure that it's the correct preset to use with the footage that I will be using from the camera? Sorry it's a pretty amateurish question but I am really starting from the ground up and would like to get things right from the start:
AVCHD>1080p: AVCHD 1080p25
For editing AVCHD Formats recorded in 1920x1080 square pixels (non-anamorphic).
16:9 progressive-scan 1080p HD video at 25 frames per second.
48kHz audio.
General
Editing mode: AVCHD 1080p square pixel
Timebase: 25.00fps
Video Settings
Frame size: 1920h 1080v (1.0000)
Frame rate: 25.00 frames/second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels (1.0)
Fields: No Fields (Progressive Scan)
Audio Settings
Sample rate: 48000 samples/second
Default Sequence
Total video tracks: 3
Master track type: Stereo
Mono tracks: 0
Stereo tracks: 3
5.1 tracks: 0
Submix mono tracks: 0
Submix stereo tracks: 0
Submix 5.1 tracks: 0
Thanks again for your help.
Regards.

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...
REPOST (thanks Hatter, but have further questions):
Setup:
Mac Pro
16GB RAM
Apple RAID card
Sonnet E4P PCIe eSATA card (dedicated channel for each of the 4 ports)
INTERNAL 2-150GB Velociraptors RAID 0 Boot array.
INTERNAL 2-750GB in RAID 0. (7200RPM Hitachi's)
EXTERNAL 5-750GB (7200RPM) RAID 0 in Sonnet Fusion D500P case
Backup drives:
Time Machine:
EXTERNAL 1TB Barracuda in OWC eSATA enclosure with Oxford chipset
Personal data/media:
EXTERNAL 2nd 1TB Barracuda in identical OWC enclosure (Mercury Elite-AL Pro)
Personal data/media (2nd backup)
Seagate 1TB FreeAgent Pro (using Firewire because Sonnet states eSATA can be untrustworthy due to chipset utilized)
Boot drive clones using SuperDuper:
250GB WD SE (1st)
400GB Simpletech (2nd)
Other drives:
500GB WD MyBook (firwire)
400GB Maxtor (USB 2.0)
Questions:
1) Am I getting the best use of my Velociraptors being used in RAID 0 (I have two clones of this array; want speed-quick boot-rapid program response)
2) I'm using the 3.75TB Fusion D500P for RAID 0 video capture via firewire from camera (SD and HD video). Is it correct the firewire MyBook and USB 2.0 Maxtor are no optimal for scratch disks? I should use a RAID array and if the drives are big, partition them? I'm having trouble finding info on this, but I suppose the place to look is the Adobe and Studio Pro forums. I have Premiere CS3, but think I'm going to rely more on Final Cut Studio 2...it's 64-bit. Still learning how to get optimal performance out of Photoshop.
3) Hatter, you mentioned "would be 'concerned' about even Oxford 934 and eSATA off 2-channel Sonnet Tempo. Same with Seagate. And MyBook, FW and USB2. I have some older FW drives, for backup and archive and rarely connected except to make a backup."
Why would you be concerned about the OWC eSATA drives with the Oxford chipset? The Barracuda drives are enterprise drives. BTW, the Sonnet E4P has a dedicated channel for each of the four ports. Are you saying there are reliability issues with the OWC drives and I suppose the concern for your (and mine) MyBook, Seagate, etc drives is that they are not enterprise grade and thus less reliable.
Also Hatter (this is a whole different story), regarding the NewerTech kit, it's my understanding the two SATA ports on the motherboard are not supported by Apple. While they do work for some applications, they do not work with Toast and Blue-Ray drives for burning Blu-Ray discs. You have to use finder for that I think. Apple should release a firmware update and support these connections!
Thanks!

I meant to reiterate the 3.75TB Fusion D500P is connected via eSATA, the video camera is connected via firewire.
Thanks.

Question about Photoshop scratch disk and specific setup

Hi Folks
Thanks for the help in advance.
I'm a novice and need help finding a solution to a new PC Build. (Windows 7 Pro 64bit with Photoshop CS6)
I only recently found out about having a scratch disk dedicated for photoshop (very novice i know ), and was wondering if a 120-128GB SSD would be enough? (Please bear in mind I can't fit large SSD raid configs to my budget, plus I live in New Zealand, so prices are higher for SSD at the moment).
I only edit single camera RAW files at a time around 25mb per file, with no large amount of layers and very rarely do large images i.e. Panorama etc. I have searched the forums but could not find a concrete answer.
My setup was originally meant for a HTPC (I don't intend to overclock), but I will also be using it for light photography projects. Specs below:
CPU: Intel i7 3770
Mobo: Asrock B75 Pro3-M (or Asus P8H77m Pro, depending on budget)
16gb Ram (maybe bump up to 32gb later)
120-128gb SSD for OS and apps
120-128gb SSD scratch disk
2 TB HDD for storage
If anyone knows, the motherboards I've listed have 3x Sata3 ports, Asrock has one Intel chip and two Asmedia controlled Sata3 ports, while Asus has 2x Intel controlled and 1x Marvell controlled Sata3 port. If I went with the Asrock, would it be okay to connect the OS/Apps SSD to the intel controlled sata3 port and have the scratch disk and storage HDD to the Asmedia sata3 ports?
And one more novice question, when I begin to edit my images, is it best to transfer my photos from memory card to storage HDD then work from there? Or would it be quicker opening images direct from a USB 3.0 card reader / USB 3.0 external hard drive?
Thanks again everyone, really appreciate it

priddye wrote:
Just to clarify, if/when I get one 256gb SSD for my main C: drive, I can load the OS/Apps and store some data for the time being (until I get another SSD) and use the 2TB HDD for scratch disk only?
Yes, that's what I meant. You could try putting Photoshop scratch on C: at least temporarily, and watch your free space carefully. If you don't work on big documents or set your history states to be very large, it might be workable. But be careful. The safe "set it and forget it" configuration is to make your HDD the one and only Photoshop scratch drive.
When I do get around to getting the second 256gb, I will look at installing the two SSD's in RAID configuration. If i were to do this, can I load the OS/Apps to the RAID SSD's as well as using them for scratch disks and have the 2TB HDD for storage? I hope that makes sense.
Sounds about right; with 512GB on tap you should be able to run just about everything from C:, as long as you don't keep your entire photo library on there. Realistically, on a big system that's got a lot of apps installed and has been used for some time, Windows and your apps may end up consuming 100 to 150 GB, so that would still leave you a lot of breathing room.
Keep in mind that what you describe may require 3rd party re-partitioning software and/or backup and restoral, or a complete reinstallation of Windows and everything (usually the latter is what is recommended when moving up to a RAID system volume).
By the way, SSDs stay in best working order if you overprovision - i.e., maintain a fair amount of free space. The internal controllers need the free space to keep the data organized well and maintain top performance.
-Noel

Internal hard drive for use as scratch disk

Am running OS 10.4.11 on a dual core 2.3 Ghz PowerPC G5. Want to install a 2nd internal hard drive for use as a scratch disk w/ FCP and for my media files, etc. Given that I can only accomodate an SATA I drive w/ 150 Gbps transfer rate what might some decent choices be for a 500 Gb to 1 TB drive suited for video (and a PowerPC G5)? I'll also be adding an external drive for backup if anyone has any suggestions.

Thanks for the recommendations. I had been looking at the Hitachi CinemaStar series but you have to reset the drive to SATA 1 for use w/ a G5 PowerMac. Resetting the drive, according to Hitachi, can only be done on a PC which I don't have access to. And I think that holds true for all their drives that are not strictly SATA 1.

Scratch Disk, Media Drive, etc Question.

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