5 Replies Latest reply: Dec 22, 2013 1:20 PM by Trevor.Dennis RSS

    Which disk fro Scartch Disk?

    Heirloom Bob Community Member

      Photoshop CS6 is installed on my SSD with 128 GB of available space. I have two conventional HDD's with 816 GB and 321 GB's free. Which should I use for my scratch disk?

       

      Bob

        • 1. Re: Which disk fro Scartch Disk?
          JJMack Community Member

          Your SSD first then one of your disk.

          • 2. Re: Which disk fro Scartch Disk?
            Heirloom Bob Community Member

            Thanks JJMack. I thought it should be one other than where the program was installed but it would not allow one of the other HDD unless I also selected the SSD.

            • 3. Re: Which disk fro Scartch Disk?
              JJMack Community Member

              You want it to operate as fast as possible so you put it on your fastest device.  It can be anywhere and depending on how many history states, cache levels,  document size, number of this and that etc 128GB my be exceeded at times so you give a second device for safety.

              • 4. Re: Which disk fro Scartch Disk?
                station_two Community Member

                What JJMack says.

                 

                The rule of thumb I follow to figure out scratch space says to figure on 50 to 100 times the size of your largest file ever multiplied by the number of files you have open.  I have seen the scratch file exceed 800 GB once, an admittedly rare occurrence, but it often exceeds 200 GB when stitching large panoramas and the like.

                 

                As an example—and stressing that I'm aware that others have even more scratch space than I do—I keep two dedicated, physically separate hard drives as my primary and secondary Photoshop scratch disks and a lot of GB free on my boot drive for the OS.  I also have 16 GB of RAM installed.

                 

                Additionally, if you only have a single HD, i.e. your boot drive, you'd need it to be large enough to accommodate both the swap files of the OS as well as Photoshop's scratch.

                • 5. Re: Which disk fro Scartch Disk?
                  Trevor.Dennis Community Member

                  What I have done through multiple hardware upgrades over the years, is to bump the previous system's boot drive into use as dedicated Scratch disk.  So it is currently a 1st gen Velociraptor.  I have a spare 2nd gen V'raptor that I ought to swap out, but it is one of a pair from a failed raid0, (I got two new drives rather than take a chance).

                   

                  But we had a discussion a month or so back, about using a dedicated SSD for Scratch, and they are pretty affordable nowadays.  I have 32Gb RAM, but here's the thing...  I have not worked on any really big files recently, but I noticed a surprisingly large scratch file last week.  I did have a few image docs open though, so it seems it is always  a good idea to have a good Scratch drive strategy.