2nd Scratch Disk?
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- mybrokenshoe
Hello. Yesterday whilst making some illustrations I noticed for the first time that my G4 was pretty slow. There is no problems with it (touch wood) Other than not enough ram.
Any way i am about to buy more to max it out, when i noticed an article about seperate harddrives for scratch disks improving performance.My questions are:
Do any folks here do that?
Is the speed improvement noticable.?
thanks
- unclesize0
Yes, I use a second hdd and it helps performance quite a bit. Especially if you don't have enough ram. Photoshop too.
- mybrokenshoe0
Hello unclesize, brilliant. would i be able to use an external firewire harddisk or should it be internal?
In fact is there a difference between them? Other than being in or out?
- ********0
You can use either, but an interal drive will have a quitter response time. You can get a cheapo 20GB drive for a few bucks.
Memory and scratch disks are an essential part of a healthy speedy mac.
- monNom0
should be internal. Firewire isn't as fast as internal
you can partition your current hard-drive to have a scratch disc.
I have mine set up on a 60gig like this:
c: 10 gig system
d: 2? gig scratch
e: 48gig storagethe only thing that ever goes into scratch is photoshop temp files.
be sure to format the scratch disc every couple of months. All the activity tends to fragment your drive space which can slow things down.
- horton0
like monNom i've got a scratch partition setup on an HD.. i went with 5gb which is really more than is required. and you should try to make it partition 1 or 2 if possible because those sections will read/ write to disk faster.
* but...
apparently PS-CS2 does not rely on scratch memory like previous versions did.. i was surprised to read this in an Apple discussion the other day... so if CS2 is running slow it probably has more to do with your G4.
- mybrokenshoe0
Hello KILLputer and monNom. Thanks for your help i will go for internal or partion my existing one.
cheers
- unclesize0
Yes use an internal disk rather than firewire. Also you should use 2 hdd rather than partitioning one. The reason is one hdd is trying to read and write at 7200rpm. Whereas 2 hdd's will be reading and writing at 7200rpm x 2. Just spinning faster, therefore more data simultaneously.
Not sure about how CS2 uses scratch disk, haven't upgraded yet ;)
- horton0
some good info here on how Scratch and Virtual Memory effect performance in PS-CS2..
- horton0
hmm.. related to that last link:
http://www.adobe.com/support/tec…
PS Bigger Tiles Plugin.. ? I've never heard about this.. has anyone activated it?
- mybrokenshoe0
Cheers folks.
I have just found a:
Seagate Barracuda 40Gb ATA 7200rpm Hard Drive
for quite cheap just wondering whether that would be ok
Also does any one know of an online tutorial for ading hard drives to g4's the one on apple is just for replacing it.
Sorry for the millions of questions but it is appreciated. :)
- horton0
buy a Western Digital... the SE Caviar ones w/ 7200rpm and 8mb cache.
they're cheap and solid, best imo.