Optimising for Photoshop

[starflyer]

Hi all,

I regularly work on 300 to 500MB Tiff files and think disk performance is holding my system back - the main problem I get is disk trashing when PS is writing/reading undo data. I have a large fixed size swap file and a large PS scratch space defined.

System is a Q6600 (stock speed atm), P5Q deluxe, 4GB of fast memory, winXP and three 750GB sata II drives in Raid 5. At the moment XP is on the first of the four partitions in the raid array, apps and swap are in the same partition and PS scratch space is on another partition.

So down to my main question...
I've just bought a 150GB 10,000 rpm Raptor drive and win 7 ultimate 64 bit. I'm planning to use the Raptor for the OS and apps and keep the Raid 5 array for my data. Bearing in mind that I mainly want to see a performance increase in PS what's the best way to set this up? Where are the best places for the windows swap file and PS scratch space?

All info greatly appreciated


Cheers,

Ian

PS - it would be good if I could dual boot my existing OS and win7 for a while... there's always the odd thing that I manage to forget to backup, export or write down when I do a clean install. Not data as that's always separate, just little things like Filezilla accounts, music playlists etc. Any tips on dual booting with my new setup?

 

[whitecrook]

RAID 5 is designed for redundancy and uptime, not for speed.

For redundancy you want RAID1, for speed, RAID 0 and if you want both you'll need 4 disks and RAID 10 them.

Ideally you should have your swap, and your scratch on separate disks (not just partitions)

I would posibly split the RAID and ue each disk individually, put each 'thing' on a disk (apps, scratch, swap , etc) using partitions on each disk if needed to split from data, and get a 1.5TB USB2 drive for backup of your data. (or just use the second 750gb, depending how much data you have but I'm guessing the raid 5 gives you ~1.5tb right now so...) This would be better than the raid


Or possibly create a RAID 0 over the first partition on 2 of the 750s, giving you more speed for the scratch

 

[starflyer]

I chose Raid 5 initially to get the highest capacity and also redundancy from only 3 disks. I do backup to external drive and a NAS box, with the external drive being taken out of the house after each backup - I just can't afford to loose any data. I'm reluctant to split the array as I need the space and redundancy, and having splashed out on win7 and the Raptor can't afford to add another disk at the moment.

Seeing as I've already bought the Raptor what's the best way to utilise it, OS, apps and swap on it and scratch in a partition on the raid array or some other combination?

 

[whitecrook]

Capacity / Speed / Cost - pick one

You say you can't afford another disk - Cost
Currently you speed is too low - speed
You have the RAID 5 set up - capacity

Currently you are compromising on speed. To get an increase in speed, you will need to either change your RAID5/disk config (reducing capacity) or outlay additional money on another disk, to maintain capacity, but increase performance.