Thread: Scratch disk options

Originally Posted by Chucaro

Steve I do not know about hardware at all so I appreciate your inputs
My system is Intel based with 2 500gb WD HDD.
The RAID/AHCI is an Intel ICH8R/9R/10R.
The 500Gb HDD have 2 partitions.
C: for the OS and the software
D: for the data
Beacause the data and the photo processing software it is in the same HDD I believe that the system operates to slow by having the scratch disc in the same HDD.
I was under the impression that if I have the scratch disc separated from the software the processing will be faster.
Also by having a separated scratch disc I can store on it the files "in progress" there fore minimaze the fragmentation.
Many times I upload 100 images of 25mb in raw each plus 70mg in tiff and then duplicate, transfer and delete some of them.
Many time I processing files of 300mg and the Intel Core Duo E6850 3.0 Ghz take up to 3 minutes or more to do a task.
This tasks was done faster in the old PC with less power.
Because I am using Win XP it is not use to have more than the 4GB ram that the board have on it.

I would appreciate if you can suggest how to go about to increase the speed.

Cheers
Arthur

Hi Arthur

From what you say its hard to determine how our disks are set up You have Raid hardware but the disks may not be set up that way. Do you have 2 x 500gb disks but show a total capacity of 500gb split over C & D? if you do then you have Raid 1, which is slow (same speed as 1 disk) but very secure. You can lose a disk and lose no data. If you have C at 500gb and D at 500gb then there are 2 way it could be configured, 1 being as single disks with no link between them or as Raid 0 with the 2 disks creating 1 big disk (1tb) and then its been split up into 2 partitions C & D i think you can find this out by going into control panel > administrative tools > computer management > disk management and see how they are broken down. if you can screen shot it it may help.

if we can sort out how thats configured we may be able to make a better educated guess at how to help things along.

By the way ... what software you using for photo processing?

Thanks

Steve

Originally Posted by Chucaro

Thank you Steve for your rapid replay.
I have asked to set the RAID to secure the data. I can see only 500gb space (one disk) so it is RAID 1.
If it is of any help the system is based on an Itel board DQ35JO with the Intel Core Duo E6850 3.0 Ghz as I have mentioned before.
The software is PSCS3 fully loaded with several plugins wich in many cases with one comand they operate several layers at the time.
Also I have Nikon CaptureNX2 wich many times is working or it is open in the BG.
Because I installed 4gb of ram and the limitations of Win XP I programed Boot.ini with an /userva=2800 /3GB switch wich have improved the speed considerable. ( MS recommendation)

Cheers

Ok so your data is secure but slow....ish...

The WIP that you store is that based on copies of originals? ie you arent going to lose anything of any importance if the disks go down? if thats the case, then i would go with 2 x 7200rpm 500gb disks (anything fast) and raid 0 them. this will get good write speeds, but lose data if a single disk goes down. (out of interest i ran a raid 0 array for 5+ years and didnt lose anything) if it is important to not lose anything then either go with tombies suggestion of the single disk, but store wip on the D drive so its safe. however it wont have the same speed as 2 x disks in raid 0...

I prefer Raid 5 myself but its expensive to impliment well. It has redundancy but if using a hardware controller gains you huge read write speeds

Hope that makes sense?

Steve