Scratch Disk - How Big?

[KeithnFW]

I have a Mac Powerbook G4 that I would like to partition a separate drive to be used as the scratch dish for Photoshop CS3. My question is . . How big does a scratch disk need to be. My hard drive on the Powerbook is only 100GB so I am kind of limited. . .

[Sonny]

Hi Keith,

Borrowed this from an article:

What's a scratch disk? It's an area on your computer's hard drive that Photoshop uses as memory. Unfortunately, hard drives are nowhere near as fast as system memory is, so you'll definitely notice a performance decrease whenever Photoshop has to use the scratch disk. There's no way around this, though. Such is life with Photoshop. However, decreased performance is better than the alternative, which is no performance. If Photoshop runs out of both system memory and scratch disk space, you'll get an error message telling you that it can't do what you've asked because your scratch disk isn't large enough. To make sure you never run into this problem, it's highly recommended that you buy yourself a second hard drive and then assign that new drive as Photoshop's scratch disk, which you would do here in the Scratch Disk options. I have a separate drive, "E", which I'm using as my scratch disk. By default, Photoshop uses your "Start Up" drive, which is usually "C", as the scratch disk, and that's not what you want at all, since it will be constantly competing with your operating system for drive space. You can partition the drive and then assign one of the partitions as your scratch disk, but even that isn't ideal. Your best bet for maximizing Photoshop's performance is to have a second hard drive installed in your computer and assign it as your scratch disk

[fnkypenguin]

very interesting, i've never heard of this, but it makes sence.

[Sonny]

On my desktop PC I had an extra 80GB Sata drive I wasn't using. Stuck it in, formatted and it's my dedicated scratch disk.

[KeithnFW]

By default, Photoshop uses your "Start Up" drive, which is usually "C", as the scratch disk, and that's not what you want at all, since it will be constantly competing with your operating system for drive space.

I just wonder what I do in regards to a laptop, with one drive.

[CobyPhoto]

Originally Posted by KeithnFW

I just wonder what I do in regards to a laptop, with one drive.

One of the Main reasons not to edit on a laptop. Performance.

I have a 250 Gig. SATA dedicated to Photoshop Scratch in my system.

CJ

[mbradley]

Keith, I have seen a few people during initial setup of mac laptops make a small 6-8gb partition off their main drive and use that as a dedicated scratch disk area. Granted, its still on the main drive, but being a seperate partition it doesn't have to fight the system virtual memory for sectors. I personally have never tested to see if it makes a difference in performance.

The absolute best thing to do in your situation is to full the laptop with as much ram as it will hold so the system and photoshop never have to write to the scratch disk.

[KeithnFW]

Originally Posted by six_o_seven

Keith, I have seen a few people during initial setup of mac laptops make a small 6-8gb partition off their main drive and use that as a dedicated scratch disk area. Granted, its still on the main drive, but being a seperate partition it doesn't have to fight the system virtual memory for sectors. I personally have never tested to see if it makes a difference in performance.

The absolute best thing to do in your situation is to full the laptop with as much ram as it will hold so the system and photoshop never have to write to the scratch disk.

thanks Mark