Scratch Disks

[Physics_Guru]

Could someone tell me what the best setup for scratch disks would be for me?

Photoshop 7 is installed on C:
All photos, graphics, and works are saved on D:

C: 80 GB Total
D: 120 GB Total

Both have over 30 GB free.

While photoshopping, mp3 are playing from D: without fail. :)

Danke - Gracias - Thanks

[Newby]

If all your graphics are on D then I believe you should use C. It slows down PS if you use the same drive for both. The best bet would be to partition a portion of your D drive and use that as your scratch disk.

Can someone verify what I'm saying, running on 2 hours of sleep doesn't make for a sound mind :D

[Scott]

Actually.. it depends on what your boot drive is. If C is your boot drive with all the application son it, then it would be best to use D as a scratch disk. (or a partition of D). The theory behind it is that with 2 disk there's more write heads to use. So if your OS is writing to disk in the background (C) then Photoshop can use the second drive to write at the same time (D). With one disk, or your scratch disk pointed to your boot drive then there's only one set of write heads available at all times. So if the OS is writing oto disk (C) and C is set as the scratch disk, Photoshop must wait for the drive heads to be free before writing to scratch space.

[Physics_Guru]

Yes, C: is my startup with WinXP Pro and all of my applications. D: is just 120GB dedicated to My Documents & other files. No apps run on it... just pull data from it.

Photoshop gives me the options of Startup, C:, and D:.

So I should make the top entry D: and the second one C:? Or just have the one set to D: and do not set any of the others?

[Joey_Bose]

what exactly is a scratch disk and how do you configure it?

[PDG]

This guy said it beautifully (http://www.karmakars.com/weblog/archives/2004/09/14/scratchdisk). To sum it up, it helps use a second drive to distribute workload.

To designate a secondary scratch disk, from File menu, select Preference and select Plug-ins & Scratch Disks, enter new drive to Secondary Scratch Disk.