Inspiring

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1 or 2 Hard Drives for Desktop

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
March 24, 2025
6 Antworten
1083 Ansichten

I am needing to purchase a new computer since Windows 10 is going bye-bye.

My question is: With Windows 11, is it best to have 2 hard drives on a desktop computer, or will Photoshop run efficiently with just 1 hard drive? (I did look at the recommendations for running Photoshop on the Adobe website.) Please note: I am not a business, but as I get older I enjoy Photoshop as photography keeps my mind and body active. I also don't want the frustrations of a new computer having issues related to the computer system.

Thank you,

Julius

Windows

Beste Antwort von D Fosse

As long as you don't open and save directly to the external drive. That is not recommended:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/networks-removable-media-photoshop.html

Copy to your local drive to work on them, then copy the finished file back.

One or two drives doesn't matter - but it makes maintenance a lot simpler if you have one system drive for OS and applications, and another for your image files and documents. Put the Photoshop scrach disk on your system drive.

J

juliust9149185Autor

Inspiring

My sincere thanks to all that commented on my post as it was very helpful.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

The simplest solution is one volume, which today is a solid state drive or SSD. Photoshop works fine on that, as long as there is enough unused space. If your photos are of a modest size, as long as the SSD inside your next computer consistently has at least 100GB of free space on it, Photoshop and Windows should have enough room for their temporary files (that are freed up when you exit Photoshop) and should work fine.

If you do advanced work with large photos, Photoshop might need more than 200GB of free space on the internal drive, for its temporary files.

10 or 20 years ago, it was more common to use multiple drives for Photoshop because drives back then were a lot slower and smaller. But today, SSDs are so fast that if you can afford a single SSD large enough to store files and leave enough free space for temporary files, one SSD is fine.

It’s also OK to use the internal drive for the system and Photoshop, and store the images on a separate SSD or hard drive.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

With my last system, I found that Photoshop rarely used anything close to its allocated memory, so I stuck with 64GB again for my current build. What it does do is create substantial temp file on your scratch drive, so it seems reasonable to do what you can to maximise drive performance to read and write to thos temp files. My current build is two years old, and the 980 Pro were a good option at thge time.

It doesn't seem that long since HDDs were doing 120MB/s sequential.

...but drives are twice as fast now. The 2TB 980Pro is a bit over $200. The highest rated drive with a price against it is $409 for another 4TB drive. I will absolutely be giving drives priority again the next time I update.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

I didn't answer your actual question, did I? Yes, I would definitely want to uber fast 2TB drives rather than a single comparable 4TB drive. Your MB will have lanes enough to read and write to both at the same time (that's why raid 0 are so fast) so it makes sense to have OS and application running on one, and data and temp files on another.

E

ExUSA

Legend

Its always a good idea to have an additional drive for backup purposes. This can actually be a spinning hard drive, as speed is not an issue with backups.

MarekMularczyk

Community Expert

You mention photography. I would recommend keeping all your photographs on an external hard-drive (Samsung makes amazing portable SSDs, I've been using them for years and highly recommned them) and load all the images from the external hard drive into Photoshop

Adobe Community ExpertAdobe Certified Professional

D Fosse

Antwort

Community Expert

As long as you don't open and save directly to the external drive. That is not recommended:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/networks-removable-media-photoshop.html

Copy to your local drive to work on them, then copy the finished file back.

One or two drives doesn't matter - but it makes maintenance a lot simpler if you have one system drive for OS and applications, and another for your image files and documents. Put the Photoshop scrach disk on your system drive.

J

juliust9149185Autor

Inspiring

Mr. Fosse,

Right now I have 2 hard drives, one for programs, etc, and the other for files of all types. I agree with you, but I am also looking at cost at this point in my life since I am not a professional making money from photography. I'm just now starting to get quotes. Thank you sir!

MarekMularczyk

Community Expert

I don't see why you would need two hard drives. One SSD would be perfect 😉

Adobe Community ExpertAdobe Certified Professional

J

juliust9149185Autor

Inspiring

Marek,

Thank you for your input. Right now I am deleting files that I will never get around to editing, but I am saving some in the event I can't get out to do photography. I do have a Samsung 2TB External SSD which I am using as a primary backup. I will also have a second and third backup with priority on the SSD.

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