Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Scratch Disks?

A

AppleGoat

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 14, 2010
655
8
Hi all,

I have two SSDs in my MacBook -- should I designate the "slower" SSD as the scratch disk in Photoshop CS5? This would be my second SSD; more specifically, the one which does NOT contain Photoshop. Or does it not matter? As my main drive, the 840 Pro, is fast enough to function as both the home of Photoshop and the scratch disk.

Thx
 
I'm not really sure, but I would put them on the faster one if you have the extra space.
 
Well Adobe advises against putting the scratch disk on the boot drive or the drive which contains the application. The Samsung 470 (SATA II) would be the scratch disk but the 840 is slightly faster so I don't know if there's a purpose of assigning the second drive as a scratch disk?
 
AppleGoat said:
Well Adobe advises against putting the scratch disk on the boot drive or the drive which contains the application. The Samsung 470 (SATA II) would be the scratch disk but the 840 is slightly faster so I don't know if there's a purpose of assigning the second drive as a scratch disk?
Click to expand...

I'm guessing this was before SSDs? And many people only have one drive so I don't think this is a big deal.
 
simon48 said:
I'm guessing this was before SSDs? And many people only have one drive so I don't think this is a big deal.
Click to expand...

This used to be a big deal with slow spinning drives, where accessing data and the program at a the same time could mean the head having to travel a long way. With SSDs there is no mechanical head, so it doesn't matter at all.
 
disasterdrone said:
This used to be a big deal with slow spinning drives, where accessing data and the program at a the same time could mean the head having to travel a long way. With SSDs there is no mechanical head, so it doesn't matter at all.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response guys. I guess I'm groping for some advantage of two 128 GB SSDs over one 256 GB SSD -- without striping the drives. I'm trying to internally justify why I went the route of reduced functionality by removing the optical drive for a second SSD, when I could have had my CDs and eaten them too with a 256GB and letting the optical drive be. Well, it was more cost effective, since I already had one of the SSDs.
 
Thanks. So there's pretty much no advantage to dual-SSDs ... without a RAID configuration?
 
AppleGoat said:
Thanks. So there's pretty much no advantage to dual-SSDs ... without a RAID configuration?
Click to expand...

Ugh. You are over-thinking this. Keep in mind those recommendations were from the 1990s from Adobe. Right now if you allow adequate space, you will be fine. Make sure you don't set your memory preferences too high. It will eat everything you give it just ram caching everything possible, and you don't want to starve the OS.
 
Ok, but beyond scratch disks, can anyone conceive of some benefit to dual-SSDs over a single SSD?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back