Scratch drive recommendation?

Hello Dear Ones,
Here's a question regarding the current preferred disk-drive type to use for a working scratch drive.
Solid State Drives [SSD] versus conventional 7.2K rpm, buffered, drives?
How do they compare? Are there any benchmark results yet?
Thank you in advance,
s
(Sent from my Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80.)

Thank you for your reply.
Aside from the interface, what are the relative speeds of the DRIVE TYPES themselves. Aside from SSD being more rugged, which is faster? Seek, read, write, etc. I have a need for speed. Photoshop and Final Cut hoover (eat) memory.
I am currently using traditional drives with an internal hardware-controlled Atto RAID (internal SCSI with 10K rpm drives and large buffers). I found striped volumes are faster than mirrored—duh.)
I have also tried external drives with a PCMCIA interface with parallel FW800 drives with my portable.
And since I have more money than brains, I also have an eSATA 3/4 card with a couple of eSATA drives for another set-up.
This is a noticeably faster interface than FW800.
I even constructed a USB 2.0 thumbdrive RAID with several 16gb Kingston DataTravelers. It worked is all I can say.
Thunderbolt is new and supposed to be the fastest interface for external drives, I understand.
So the question remains.

Similar Messages

How necessary is a separate scratch drive??

Greetings from cold, windy Humboldt,
I'm looking into buying a new 15" macbook pro w/ my student discount and using FCP 5.1 to edit a short film on it. I do not have any form of external drive and quite honestly I won't have any money left to buy one after I've paid for the laptop. My film professor was very adamant about the fact that we could NOT capture video onto the SAME drive that we were editing video on. Why is this, assuming that I have enough space on the single hard drive to capture and edit? I don't want to cause any explosions or hasten armageddon or anything, I'm just broke and I have a deadline that can't wait for me to buy another drive... Could I just edit the film in small pieces and back up the project to data DVDs as I go? And could anyone recommend to me how much video to edit at a time, or what would be the maximum of captured video (miniDV, not HD) that I could reasonably dump on a 160GB hard drive at once and then edit?
Does anyone out there do their editing and capturing entirely on one computer, esp. a laptop? It seems like the powerful new Intel macbook PROs should be capable? Am I missing something?
none yet Mac OS X (10.4.9) considering an Intel Macbook Pro 15"

The system drive has to run the operating system, and FCP as well as any other programs you may have open. If you add to that workload the task of capturing footage, you are pushing that one drive pretty hard.
That being said, many people successfully edit this way, but be aware that you risk dropping frames and other problems.
If you do work this way, do not fill your drive beyond aprox. 85% (general rule for any scratch drive) It will probably also help to close all other programs and open sequences during the capture process.
As for editing in "small pieces" that's not really the issue. But if you do want to conserve drive space then I'd recommend logging you footage before capturing so that you can avoid capturing things you do not need.
rh

New computer build -- Photoshop scratch drive options

It’s been years since I built my last Photoshop computer, so I’m researching what I want to include in my next build.
I may use this computer for some video editing, but for the most part it will be dedicated to Photoshop. I’m running CS5. I’ll be stitching RAW images, & routinely editing 500+ MB files. The configuration I’m closing in on is as follows:
Windows 7, 64 bit
Intel i5 2500K processor
16 GB’s of RAM
One of the soon-to-be released motherboards utilizing the Z68 Express chipset
My question is about the Photoshop scratch drive, & what’s the best current technology. On my old computer, I originally had a two-drive RAID 0 array, but when the Promise RAID controller started having problems, I reverted back to a single Raptor drive. I see three or four possibilities for scratch on my new computer:
1) Use a SSD as my scratch drive. The question I have is about reliability in this application given the large number of sequential read & write operations required of a scratch drive.
2) Build a RAID 0 array with mechanical drives. Which ones? I’ve read that the top-rated fast WD Caviar Black drives have problems in a RAID 0 configuration.
3) Just go with a single drive – Anandtech tests show a single WD Caviar Black drive is almost as fast as single VelociRaptor when the data is sequential reads & writes.
4) The new Z68 motherboards will support the Intel Smart Response Technology that can make the SSD become the "Cache of the HDD" to boost up the HDD access speed. The idea is to use a small cheap SSD as the cache. This has yet to be proven in a Photoshop environment, & it may run into the same reliability issues I’m asking about in item #1 above.
Can anyone with PS scratch-performance knowledge enlighten me on the current state of affairs?
Thanks,
--Alan

It's my opinion that you want to do all you can to keep Photoshop from having to go to the scratch drive, and when it must it's going to be painfully slow no matter what hardware you have. This is based on the theory that RAM access is orders of magnitude faster than disk (even SSD) and the observation that Photoshop sometimes writes horrendously large datasets to the scratch drive.
You're doing the right thing, going to 16 GB (24 GB might even be better). I have 16 GB and for all "normal" work I find Photoshop to be very fast and not go virtual, even after long editing sessions. In testing, however, I've been able to force Photoshop to go virtual by doing things like:
1. Processing a 1 gigapixel image (e.g., 32767 x 32767 pixels).
2. Stitching fairly huge (substantial portion of a gigapixel when finished) panoramas.
In my case I've chosen to use a single mechanical 1 TB hard drive for scratch, and I've watched Photoshop in case 2 above (panos) actually write more than 200 gigabytes of data to the drive.
I recommend paying a bit more for top quality enterprise class disk drives (e.g., Western Digital RE4), instead of consumer models. They're fast, are built for hard use and much higher reliability, and have additional features (like vibration reduction).
Also keep in mind that a RAID setup effecitvely adds the on-drive RAM caches together, so for example a RAID 0 C: drive, made from 2 RE4 drives each of which sports 64 MB on-drive cache) now delivers 2 x SATA 2 transfer rates with 128 MB on-drive cache. This, along with enabling of Windows 7's highest throughput caching (which is not on by default) means that drive C: access will always be surprisingly quick.
FYI, I recently purchased a powerful dual quad core workstation that implements the above on the cheap... I've described how in these threads. Depending on your budget, possibly worth considering in lieu of a new build...
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3570020#3570020
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3605467#3605467
-Noel

64 Bit CS5 Won't run after I unchecked the 'C' Scratch Drive....

The problem started when I went into the 64 bit version of CS5; edit : preferences : performance and in the scratch drive options I unchecked the ‘C’ drive option. (I know.... doesn't make sense to do that) CS5 runs from the C drive BTW. I then closed the program and on restart it would not work. When trying to open CS5 64 bit version I get an Adobe Photoshop CS5 message that states: “Could not open a scratch file because the file is locked or you do not have the necessary access privleges. Use the ‘Properties’ command in the Windows Explorer to unlock the file. When I click on the OK button I get a second message that says, “Could not initialize Photoshop because the file is locked or you do not have the necessary access privledges. Use the ‘Properties’ command in the Windows Explorer to unlock the file. Un install and install takes me to the same problem. For what it’s worth the 32 bit version of CS5 runs fine. This is probably an easy fix for an expert but alas... that is not me. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. Richard on the Eastern Shore of Virginia

The root cause is likely a permissions issue. You need to make sure you have Full Control privileges to the root folder of each of the hard drives you have told Photoshop to use, as well as to the folder identified on your system by the TEMP environment variable.
Also, you may want to just turn off Windows UAC entirely, though you should research UAC and fully understand what it does and what the additional risks are before making the decision to do this.
A quick fix for you to get you working again might be to press and hold the Control and Alt keys immediately after starting Photoshop from its icon or menu item. If you're quick enough, it will pop up a dialog allowing you to re-specify the scratch disks you had before when it worked.
-Noel

Network Drives / FCP Scratch Drive

Hi
This might be a networking question, but here goes.
I have FCP 5 runnning nicely over GB Enet to a drive cluster.
The workstation has an account shared by editors. The editor logs into the machine, then mounts a personal network share using smb and a private log in.
Here's the problem:
editor A comes in, opens FCP, logs into NetWork Share A and sets the Scratch Drives to Network Share A. They work, unmount their share and are done.
now editor B comes in. They log into NetWork Share B .... run FCP... but because FCP still has the Scratch Drives set to NetWork Share A the computer automatically runs 'Connect To Server' and attempts to log on to NetWork Share A. If Editor B fails to log in correctly to Share A (which Editor B always does) or cancels the log in, FCP quits. No reset Scratch Drive prompt (as with missing firewire volumes ... just quits.
Users can delete the FCP prefs to avoid this situation... but it's a pain. Probably a Bug really.
However does anyone know how to stop the automatic attempt to connect to the server?
Thanks
Lee

You can avoid this, I believe, by having separate user logins for each editor...
Patrick

Best practice question re. importing and scratch drive

Hello:
Will be editing .mov files primarily (Panasonic TM900 files wrapped as ProRes 422HQ - via ClipWrap). I'm using an external scratch drive.
Questions:
1. is it best to "copy" the files to the project as is the default check mark or uncheck and save disk space?
2. on the scratch drive, I currently have the original .mts files and then a new folder with the wrapped files. Is it better to keep these on the main HDD or is it ok to be on the scratch drive as well. Thnaks.
Steve

Yes read your manual to understand more but here is a clip:
Create proxy media: This option creates video and still-image proxy files. Video is transcoded to the Apple ProRes 422 (Proxy) codec format, which provides high-quality files useful for offline editing at the original frame size, frame rate, and aspect ratio. Final Cut Pro creates medium-quality (one-quarter resolution) proxy versions that increase editing performance. Video proxy files take up considerably less disk space, which often means you can work on a portable computer instead of a desktop computer that has significantly more memory and processing power. Still images are transcoded to either JPEG (if the original file doesnʼt have alpha channel information) or PNG files (if the file has alpha channel information). Still-image proxy files facilitate faster processing and rendering when the original image is very large.
Note: When transcoding files, Final Cut Pro always retains the original media for future use. For more information about where to find original media, proxy media, and transcoded media files, see Where your media and project files are located.

FCP locks up system after 5 min digitize, fills scratch drive w 1 big file.

For some reason, FCP has developed a problem with capturing media that it didn't have before.
When doing Capture Now to the usual internal media 250 GB drive (not the Apps drive), after about 5.5 minutes (I think it's always the exact same duration) the picture in the Digitize Window freezes and the computer totally locks up requiring manual restart.
Once up and running again, I see that on the Capture Scratch drive, the clip I was attempting to create has taken up all remaining space on the target drive, even if it's around 200 GB. Naturally the file is corrupted and doesn't play. I have to go to that drive, trash the huge file and empty trash before I can digitize to that drive again.
For digitize durations under the five and a half minutes, seemingly everything works fine.
I have been using the same protocol for digitizing for years. Don't know what changed to cause this. Capture Now duration is limited to 30 minutes.
I tried digitizing to a different media capable drive (external) and the same thing happened there, so it doesn't seem to be a problem associated with the computer's media drive.

Here's the thread that explains what's happening.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6334637
I had it, you have it, It's due to a conflict between QT 7.3, ACP 4.5 and 10.3.9. I just finished doing a clean install and all that that entails. Now it's working again. Just don't use QT later than 7.2. I'm back to a 6.? version and it's working fine. When I reinstalled the system, it went back to that older version. I could download 7.2 and install, but not anxious to do it just in case, having become a devotee to iiabdfi (if it aint broke etc...). Next time I think I'll buy a medium capacity hard drive and do some carbon copy cloning. I gather that when you use ccc you're pretty much reformating your target drive, yah?

Scratch drive setup - Mac

CS4 AME with a MBP
Just wanted some advice on getting the fastest encode times for my PP sequence projects. I threw out a question out a few days ago here about reconfiguring preferences to enable quicker encodes in AME CS4. Since nobody had any comments, I have to assume that there is not really anything that can be done to configure the software or preferences.
Maybe I can set up my scratch drive configuration better?
Currently I have a MBP with esata and FW800. I have a fast 7200rpm external hd with plenty of headroom which is formatted OS Extended - non journaled. It is connected via esata. The raw video files that PP are using in a sequence are read from this drive and the encode is being written to the same drive.
Would it be better to have the sequence files on a seperate drive? What is the best encode scratch drive setup (raid0 is not a consideration in my setup)?
Thanks in advance

Here's what I consider a starting point for a good system.
C: System
D: Projects
E: Scratch
F: Media
G: Exports
All local, internal drives.
You can of course make CS6 work just fine with less, but as you descend from that, you start to introduce bottlenecks and slowdowns. As you add to it, you add speed and performance. That config is a good middle ground.

Esata vs fw800 user preferences set up for scratch drive

I would like to switch scratch disc capture from a current fw800 setup (and setting) to esata. I purchased a express card34 esata. scratch disc is an external 3.5in 750gb 7200rpm hdd esata
My question is this: should I make an adjustment in user preferences in regards to "limit real-time" Currently i have it set for fw800 at 42mb.
Also my deck is connected via fw800 to scratch drive. Will this present a complication when capturing via capture devise fw800> scatch drive esata> fcp?
I have search the manual and here without any references to this.
Message was edited by: magnumip

Found it. Page 1820 of the FCP 7 user manual (.pdf)
+Limit real-time video to N MB/s: Final Cut Pro uses this number to limit how many video streams can play back from your scratch disk in real time. This is useful when multiple editing systems are sharing the same media (such as a storage area network, or SAN), or when you have a scratch disk with a limited data rate, such as a portable computer hard disk.+
+For example, suppose you try to play a sequence with six simultaneous video tracks containing DV media, and Final Cut Pro warns you that frames were dropped during playback. If you then try to play a sequence with five simultaneous video tracks and no frames are dropped, you know that your scratch disk can handle no more than five simultaneous DV video streams. Since DV has a data rate of 3.6 MB/sec., you can select the “Limit real-time video to” option and enter 18 MB/sec. (5 x 3.6 MB/sec.) in the number field. Now, if a sequence requires a sustained data rate of more than 18 MB/sec. for+
+playback, Final Cut Pro shows a red render bar over this portion of the sequence.+
+Note: Final Cut Pro always allows a single video stream to play, even if the data rate limit you set is below the data rate of a single video stream. For example, if you set the data rate limit to 1 MB/sec., Final Cut Pro would still play back a single DV video stream, even though its data rate is 3.6 MB/sec.+

Benefits of a Dedicated Scratch drive

I have been having very good luck running Premeire Pro CS5.5 on my Dell XPS Studio (8 gig of ram) with one 2TB drive in it but running most of the jobs off of my 8TB Netgear RAID box. I am thinking about putting another 2TB drive inside the computer and use it as a scratch drive only. Will that improve anything in the performance? The only issue I have now is some slowing when I drop 30 minutes or more of video on a timeline. That is not a big deal but I'd like to have a better idea about if a dedicated scratch drive will step performance or reliability up in any way.

I can confirm a nice, fast drive (I used a 2TB WD Cavier Black 7200 RPM drive as my scratch and media cache drive) yields noticeable improvement over those files residing on the system drive or the project drive.
When I RAIDED my project drive, however, the improvement was not so noticeable. I can say that there was more fluctuation in performance putting all on the one RAIDed drive, though. (ie, Renders showed more consistent high CPU utilization, but utilization tended to dip up and down more).

What RAID Setup do you use for your Macbook Pro Scratch Drive?

Is there any benefit to using an Express-ESata Raid Enclosure vs a single esata drive as the scratch drive?
If so, is there any benefit to using a 4 drive Raid 0 vs a 2 drive raid 0?
What Raid setups are any of you all using with your MacBook Pro's? Is there a significant performance difference between using a E-Sata drive and a FW800 drive. Is RAID the right way to go?
Sorry I'm not making a lot of sense right now, but I've searched through 20 or so pages of the forum and didn't see that anyone had addressed this question yet.

OK, just to give you a frame of reference, I just performed the following tests -
I hooked up my Sony AVCHD camera to my Mac Book Pro 2.4 ghz with 4 GB ram - (pretty close configuration to yours) - and imported a 26 second clip into FCP 7 with the following drive configurations:
Capture to internal Mac Drive, no externals: 26 Second clip takes 44 seconds
Capture to external WD USB2 drive: 26 Second clip takes 44 Seconds
Capture to external CalDigit 2 Sata Drive Array, Raid 0, via Firewire 800: 26 Second clip takes 42 seconds
OK, so now I move the camera over to my Mac Pro 8-Core, 2 x 3.2 Ghz Quad Core Xeon with 14 gigs of ram, and capture *to the same external CalDigit 2 Sata Drive Array,* Raid 0, via Firewire 800: 26 Second clip takes 11 seconds
My conclusion would be the drives and drive throughput is not as consequential as the CPU horsepower in doing the conversion from AVCHD to Pro Res. However, there are many very knowledgeable people who look at these threads, and I would be interested to hear what they have to say.
Hope this helps.
Message was edited by: Meg The Dog to correct typo

Scratch Drive

Hello,
I have a couple of questions about Scratch Drives and Final Cut:
1. If I changed the current scratch drive, would all of the current data transfer over?
2. Would the Final Cut App still load off the main boot drive with all the Apps?
3. How do you change the scratch drive?
Thanks

1. If I changed the current scratch drive, would all of the current data transfer over?
No. Only the footage you import after changing the scratch drive will be in that location.
2. Would the Final Cut App still load off the main boot drive with all the Apps?
Final Cut Studio apps must be on the boot drive to work at all.
3. How do you change the scratch drive?
From the menu bar: Final Cut Pro > System Settings > Scratch Disk.

Weird files on my "scratch" drive...anyone know what they are?

Here is a screen shot of what keeps showing up on my file sytem on my "Scratch" drive which is used for movie related work.
http://cl.ly/3L2n2W05403K2f0q0H1k
I've deleted the index.dat and all those folders with weird names many times and they keep showing up.
Not sure what applicaiton or process is doing this...any clues?
Thanks.

Looks like Final Cut Pro temp files

Is scratch drive necessary with 64 bit ps cs4? with abundant ram

I intend to acquire ps cs4 andi have a 64 bit machine with 32gb of ram...problem is it would be difficult for me to set up a different scratch disc...how much ram would one need in order to see no benefit from a scratch disc ??

since i brought it up i just did the math...2 to 64th power is 1.84 times 10 to 19th power...i think that bears some relationship to how much ram the cpu can access but i'm not computer literate enuff to be sure anyway i'm a little off topic
as i understand it the reason that photoshop uses scratch drives is so the app doesn't have to compete with the operating system for what os calls "virtual memory"...i would think if one had enuff ram that the os wouldn't need virtual memory so ps would not be competing for hard drive access even if it did need to use it...i'm a little curious why ps doesn't address the fact that computers are continuously equipped with more and more ram....if adobe bothers to develop a 64 bit application that can address scads of ram why does ps continue to use hard drives for scratch files-when memory is faster ?

Capture failure due to full Scratch drives. Unable to assign new Scratch D

I'm trying to import a 15 minute clip but I keep on getting message "current scratch drive(s) are too full. Select a new capture scratch location."
I created a new folder, calling it capture scratch 2. I tried locating it on the same drive (and also on another drive.) Both drives are internal on the mac.
However, FC does not seem to recognize the new location and repeats the same message.
I really need some help here. Yu scratch my back and I'll scratch yours !

Thanks for your reply Al.
My scratch disk is on my system drive, filed under Library.
The whole scratch disk amounts to 267.59 GB. I didn't realize it has become so big.
The thing is, I tried setting up a second Scratch disk, also filed under library. But FC simply
repeats the same error message when I try to import clips, saying that scratch disk is full.
(The drive has 21 gigs available.) I tried setting up a scratch disk to my second drive, which is a partition of the primary drive. But same error message. FC doesn't seem to recognize any other location other than the primary scratch drive! I was thinking maybe to set up an external drive for the scratch disk, but I imaging FC will still come up with the same error. Any other ideas?

Scratch drive recommendation?

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