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2011 MBP17 for Photoshop

C

Chris Kraft

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 10, 2008
15
0
La Habra, CA
So I've gone through the threads here and the guides over at Mac Performance Guides and wanted confirmation from those here, that I fully understood what I read.

I plan on buying the new 17" and will put 8GB of RAM myself. What I was wondering is this; should I get the Apple 128SSD (it's only +$90 for Govt) and buy one of the new SATA III drives, put the Apple SSD in the optibay and put the new SATA III drive in the main drive slot? I wanted to use the Apple SSD for a scratch disk and use my external eSata drive with a Sonnet 34 Express card for the image files.

Does this make sense? Thanks guys!
 
Chris Kraft said:
So I've gone through the threads here and the guides over at Mac Performance Guides and wanted confirmation from those here, that I fully understood what I read.

I plan on buying the new 17" and will put 8GB of RAM myself. What I was wondering is this; should I get the Apple 128SSD (it's only +$90 for Govt) and buy one of the new SATA III drives, put the Apple SSD in the optibay and put the new SATA III drive in the main drive slot? I wanted to use the Apple SSD for a scratch disk and use my external eSata drive with a Sonnet 34 Express card for the image files.

Does this make sense? Thanks guys!
Click to expand...
No...

Keep the SSD in the main bay and run the OS off that, it will run very very fast. If you run the OS off anything in the optibay Ive heard of issues like not properly booting and sleeping but I could be wrong. Use the HDD for scratch files.
 
I was going to run the OS along with program files, off the new SATA III drive that I replace the Apple SSD with. I would then move the Apple drive over to the optibay and use as a scratch disk.

I only use this laptop for Photoshop and some occasional internet browsing and the like.
 
If you plan on running out and buying one of the SATA III SSDs then and then optibaying the drive in your MB now... Why not get a large platter drive and use that as scratch? Save some money and you'll have some proper storage.
 
I assume he wants scratch on the SSD for speed... but I think keeping the scratch on a physically separate disk is old school thinking meant for platter drives that have moving heads. Having your scratch on the same drive as your OS is not a big deal when you're talking about SSDs.

So while OP's plan is fine, he is probably going to extremes just to keep the scratch separate from the OS. You would be fine putting scratch on the same SSD that is in your main SATA III slot and putting whatever you want in the optibay -- even a large platter drive.
 
Sweet, I did not know that about the SSD's for scratch use. So I'll put a large platter in the optibay for storage and an SSD for both OS and scratch!

Thank you so much everyone for the help!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D:D:D:D:D
 
Chris Kraft said:
Sorry; one last question. I take it I should still partition the OS/scratch drive?
Click to expand...

Glad you got it sorted.

Partitions don't do anything except make it more organized for you; so up to you. There isn't anything physically different about the drive when you partition it.
 
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