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What is Having an Extra Internal Hard Drive Used for in Photoshop CC?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
April 18, 2019
6 replies
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I'm planning on getting a new PC, and while I intend to install Photoshop CC on a SSD, I've heard of some people using another internal hard drive. Expect I don't know what it would be used for. I have heard it would be used as a backup to put users folders from Photoshop CC onto, or as an alternative scratch disk. Is this what they are often used for in Photoshop CC? Or is there other options? Also, is it best having 1 extra hard drive or 2 extra hard drives in addition to the SSD?

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Correct answer Conrad_C

LoudNoises wrote
Or is there other options? Also, is it best having 1 extra hard drive or 2 extra hard drives in addition to the SSD?

It depends on the purpose, and which drives are the biggest and fastest. If an SSD is your system drive and it's got enough space to store all your Photoshop documents and the scratch files, there's no advantage to a second hard drive because any hard drive is much slower than an SSD.

But if you can't afford an internal SSD large enough to store your system, applications, documents, and scratch files, then additional hard drives (internal or external) are a cheap way to get enough space. You can then store your Photoshop documents on the hard drives.

If you have an internal SSD, using additional hard drives as scratch files doesn't help much because of how much slower hard drives are than SSDs or RAM. Since scratch files are like a RAM cache, you want to use very fast storage for them, not hard drives. The only reason we used hard drives for scratch in past years is because SSDs weren't available yet.

The best case scenario, if you can afford it, is one or more SSDs big enough to store everything including scratch files.

Next best, and more affordable, is using
an SSD for the system, applications, and scratch files, and additional hard drives to store documents and backups.

Semaphoric

Community Expert

One reason for an extra drive is Photoshop and Windows both use disc drives as virtual memory — the Windows Page File, and Photoshop's Scratch Discs. By having these on separate devices means that one drive head doesn't have to constantly jump from one to the other, which would slow things down a lot.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Semaphoric wrote
One reason for an extra drive is Photoshop and Windows both use disc drives as virtual memory — the Windows Page File, and Photoshop's Scratch Discs. By having these on separate devices means that one drive head doesn't have to constantly jump from one to the other, which would slow things down a lot.

John, I've always thought that pagefile.sys was the one thing you should leave on the boot drive, but I know a lot of sites suggest relocating it as both saving drive space and even improving performance. My information comes from the Premiere Pro Hardware forum guys rather than one of the Windows Guru type sites. So you have got me interested now. Having said that, your first sentence is maybe not as clear as it might be, and I am not sure which way you are leaning. (Sorry. That sounds bad )

I had to go with a 512Gb boot drive for my current system, as the Samsung 960 PRO did not come in 256Gb, so I have left a lot of stuff that I usually relocate on the boot drive. I have a second 512Gb 960 PRO, so I use that as Primary Scratch and working projects.

LoudNoises If boot drive space is an issue, and you are using Windows, then we recommend WinDirStat as a tool for finding chunks of drive space usage that might be OK to relocate or do away with. But one of the first things I do with a new Windows installation, is disable Hibernate. Apart from the space it takes, it can be a nightmare causing problems when your computer wakes from hibernate.

Ussnorway7605025

Legend

Trevor.Dennis wrote
I've always thought that pagefile.sys was the one thing you should leave on the boot drive, but I know a lot of sites suggest relocating it as both saving drive space and even improving performance.

the page file in Windows defaults to C because it is over 20 years old and back in the day computers only had a single drive.

'there is zero difference in performence but there are space saving senarios, for example a dual boot (or host with V-systems) can share a single pagefile which is not on their c drive so you only need the one

the catch is Windows installer is dum as dog food & allowing upgrades to auto run will temp bugger your file system because it will only look for pagefile on the C and force install one if its not there

'assumes one harddrive isn't physically faster than the other

p.s, both Windows and Photoshop can Bluescreen or crash if no file is allowed... even when your system has buckets of ram because the base code assumes its there

Theresa J

Community Expert

My internal SSD drive runs my computer, it doesn’t store my files. It has the OS and the applications installed on it. My documents, which includes images or Photoshop files, are saved on external hard drives. There are several benefits to this. First, I don’t have to worry about running out of space on the drive that runs my computer. Second, if my start up drive fails (and that recently happened to me), only the OS and applications, and mail, and account stuff have to be restored. That’s increasingly easy to do these days with cloud backup for so much of that information. Third, external drives are relativity inexpensive and simple to plug in, making it easy to expand storage as needed. And If you ever have to evacuate your home in a hurry (which I have also had to do), it’s easy to grab the external drives and leave the computer. External hard drives are also great for backup. I have one large external hard drive dedicated to backing up all the other hard drives that have my files on them.

L

LoudNoisesAuthor

Participant

That's pretty much my setup. I have two external hard drives (one for videos, one for everything else including pictures) set up, and are plugged into my PC via USB port 24/7. Does this mean I can use a SSD with less space than 1TB?

Theresa J

Community Expert

My SSD is 512GB and it's plenty big enough for me. Everyone's setup is a little different though.

Conrad_C

Correct answer

Community Expert

LoudNoises wrote
Or is there other options? Also, is it best having 1 extra hard drive or 2 extra hard drives in addition to the SSD?

It depends on the purpose, and which drives are the biggest and fastest. If an SSD is your system drive and it's got enough space to store all your Photoshop documents and the scratch files, there's no advantage to a second hard drive because any hard drive is much slower than an SSD.

But if you can't afford an internal SSD large enough to store your system, applications, documents, and scratch files, then additional hard drives (internal or external) are a cheap way to get enough space. You can then store your Photoshop documents on the hard drives.

If you have an internal SSD, using additional hard drives as scratch files doesn't help much because of how much slower hard drives are than SSDs or RAM. Since scratch files are like a RAM cache, you want to use very fast storage for them, not hard drives. The only reason we used hard drives for scratch in past years is because SSDs weren't available yet.

The best case scenario, if you can afford it, is one or more SSDs big enough to store everything including scratch files.

Next best, and more affordable, is using
an SSD for the system, applications, and scratch files, and additional hard drives to store documents and backups.

Ussnorway7605025

Legend

I have personally tested a Kingston HyperX to fail and stand by my statment however at the end of the day its his money being spent

L

LoudNoisesAuthor

Participant

Thanks everyone for the advice and help, but if it further helps, the SSD I'm planning to get is 1TB while the additional hard drive is 4TB

Ussnorway7605025

Legend

photoshop scratch drive is what people use the extra drive as... the short version is Photoshop uses harddrive space as ram when working things out like 3d models or large file formats & its a very bad idea to treat ssd drives as temp space because they only have so many writes in them before they fail

Conrad_C

Community Expert

Ussnorway wrote
its a very bad idea to treat ssd drives as temp space because they only have so many writes in them before they fail

That may have been true once, but today that's nothing to worry about. With today's SSDs, most of us will never come close to hitting the write limit, even with the affordable consumer models, as tests have demonstrated.

All of the drives surpassed their official endurance specifications by writing hundreds of terabytes without issue....we've watched modern SSDs easily write far more data than most consumers will ever need. Errors didn't strike the Samsung 840 Series until after 300TB of writes, and it took over 700TB to induce the first failures. The fact that the 840 Pro exceeded 2.4PB is nothing short of amazing, even if that achievement is also kind of academic.
Obviously, the limited sample size precludes drawing definitive conclusions about the durability and reliability of the individual drives. The second HyperX's against-all-odds campaign past 2PB demonstrates that some SSDs are simply tougher than others. The important takeaway is that all of the drives wrote hundreds of terabytes without any problems. Their collective endurance is a meaningful result.