Quick question for Photoshop users regarding scratch disk

My daughter just finished building my new computer and is starting to install Windows and I need to make a decision right now on partitioning a part of the hard drive to use as the scratch disk for CS6.

Before I was using an external 500GB HD as a scratch disk. Is it better to partition my 2 TB main HD or is it ok to still keep using the external? If I should partition, how much should I allot for it?? 500GB still?

If anyone can answer asap that would be super! My daughter and I are standing by ...

Denise ;)

I presume when you say '2TB Main Disk' that also means that you've also got another 'data disk' for photos and such?
2TB is huge, I don't know how much windows and Photoshop takes these days but you should easily be able to take 500GB off the end for scratch space.
I've got a 60GB SSD for my 'main drive', 30gb is all I need for programs so the other 30gb (which i was saving for a virtualised OS that never happened) is now swap space for when i go past my 4GB of physical ram). Then all my photos and such are on a (nearly full) 1TB data disc.

(Technically, for normal old spinning hard discs you should take the 'front' end off for scratch/swap space, it's faster there, but I don't think wondows likes that, at least it never used to).

Thank you so much Dr. for responding so quickly ...you are a sweetheart!! I was leaning toward using the internal HD but now I just read on another forum that someone mentioned using the internal HD as a scratch disk makes it wear faster. So, now I am leaning back toward using the external solely as a scratch disk again. Hmmmm ...

Depends what kind of 'wearing' is going on. Just writing and re-writing over the same bit again and again? That's definitely a concern on SSDs which will eventually blow up the bit concerned, and it's a slight concern on spinny ones too. But either way, scratch is scratch, and most discs (if not the OS) will just mark it as a bad bit and move on to the next bit. Wear and tear from spinning the motor? yeah, but it's spinning anyway, because you've got windows and photoshop and all that running.
And don't forget, 'wearing faster' is going to happen on the external drive too. As long as you're sensible, have programs (which can be reinstalled) on the 'main' disc (with the scratch space), and data on the 'data' disc with as many external/offsite backups as you can afford, then you should be fine.

Also, don't forget that even at USB3.0 vs SATA, SATA is always going to win...

I don't think the wearing of SSD drives is made out to be much worse threat than it actually is. With my 3-4 years of experience (3 different drives) using them I would say they are more reliable than conventional HHDs. Even the cheaper lower grade TLC based (vs. MLC) drives will last for years with even 30GB/day writes on them.

Some links regarding the subject:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/s...ce-of-tlc-nand
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rate,2923.html
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...e-25nm-Vs-34nm

I have my PC setup as follows:

• New Samsung 256GB 840 Pro SSD as system drive with all the programs installed here.
• My old Intel X25-M 120GB SSD as scratch disk for Photoshop and other programs that need temp/cache space (Adobe Camera Raw cache etc.) I also store my Lightroom catalogs here.
• Photos and other media on two 1.5TB conventional HDDs.
• My Photoshop is also configured to use my system drive and conventional HDDs as scratch disks if needed.

I don't think there would be a very big difference configuring an additional partition on your 2TB drive for scratch disk vs. just letting Photoshop using the free space on the drive. After all the partition is on the same disk as Photoshop and your system (Windows) even if you make a dedicated partition for it vs. being on another dedicated hard disk drive. Maybe there was a noticeable difference some time ago when HDD fragmentation was a big problem but modern HDDs and operating systems counter this quite effectively in my opinion.

As Dr Croupie has mentioned one thing you should avoid is using an external drive as a scratch disk as that is always much slower than any (HDD or SSD) internal drives. So in that regard you are making the correct decision moving the scratch disk to your internal drive.

These articles are also worth reading when optimizing the performance of Adobe products:
http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/20...rformance.html
http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/...nce-hints.html

Hope this helps and congratz on your new machine!

And don't forget to clone your drive after you do updates and before you install trial stuff. It's a good place to revert to if needed and saves time.