Best way to utilize SSD drive with Adobe/Photoshop?

[complexity]

  Hi guys, 

Just bought my first SSD drive (240GIG)and are about to set it up for the purpose of doing any Adobe CC work the fastest I can.

Obviously I have to install the Windows 7 Pro system onto the drive and Adobe files, I imagine that any work Adobe .psd/work files I should also keep on the drive?

So partition it like

C: Windows 100GIG

D: Program Files and Work Files 140GIG

???

Or should I add another drive E: so I can set scratch disks to it?

Or can scratch disks just utilise my old non SSD drive?

I imagine getting everything onto SSD would be the way to go, but thats only guessing.

Any help or advice would be great

[station_two]

Lundberg02 wrote:

…BTW station_two our discussion was deleted by the moderator as expected…

"Totally normal and expected behavior," Lundberg02, as we sometimes have to reply to users who think they're seeing something out of the ordinary in Photoshop. 

I'll be sure to report on my progress with that unmentionable plug-in.

I was fully confident about your first name. 

[station_two]

Thanks for the kind words, Trevor.  I just wanted to address your comment about Adobe IDs.

[Hudechrome]

We have had differences also, but we have had concurrences as well, and much more important ones at that. So, I suggest the PTB to purge all blocks to your original mame.

Please?

[Hudechrome]

Hardly a question of app loading. The WEI directly addresses the File Transfer Rate. WEI with HDD:5.9  WEI with SSD, 7.2. And that number is the processor number. Data Transfer is 7.7.

HDD Transfer Rate:

Min: 74Mb

Max: 85

SSD:

Min: 177

Max: 190.

Worth the money in my book.

I fail to understand how you concluded I was supplying information from app loading times. My post to which you responded clearly stated File transfer Rates.

[Noel Carboni]

Max sequential transfer rate with SSD on a SATA II (not III) is about 250 megabytes per second, while (as Lawrence points out) a typical electromechanical HDD runs less than 150 megabytes per second (often a lot less).

But perhaps the more important aspect of SSD is that there is virtually no seek time.

This is a far bigger factor than most people realize.

Actual operation, where more than one process is issuing I/O requests and where repeated random access to logical blocks (implying seeking) is occurring, can yield many times greater speed differences than the raw numbers above imply.

Here's a comparison between a realistic benchmark run on HDD vs. SSD.  This "Workstation" benchmark simulates a real-world mix of operations that result in seeking.  Note the nearly 40 to 1 performance difference here.

SSD performance:

HDD Performance:

-Noel

[Hudechrome]

What tool did you use to measure this? That HDD time is far slower than mine. Is the seek time included?

The tool I use is HDTune.

Message was edited by: Hudechrome

[Noel Carboni]

That was the Advanced test in the Passmark Performance Test 8.0 tool.

http://www.passmark.com/products/index.htm

This test is more real-world, in that it simulates real disk activity, including seeking, competition for resources, etc.  It is exactly my point that the reality of loading up a computer system is often FAR  different than the benchmarks that strive to give you the highest possible numbers will show.  Both kinds of tests are useful, but the real-world test gives you a better idea of why SSD is overall "better" than HDD, and how it might fare in day to day use.

Tools like HDTune just give you the flat out sequential read/write speed.  Last I looked HDTune also is not highly regarded by SSD afficionados, in that it doesn't necessarily measure the SSD in the most effective ways.  But HDTune, ATTO, AS SSD, Anvil, Crystal DiskMark, and a number of others are great for stressing things to the max and telling you whether your setup is stable, and what the theoretical max speeds can be.

-Noel

[Hudechrome]

HDTune came out before SSD so I approached it cautiously. I can benchmark the SSD with Samsung software but I don't want to use up the write overprovisioning which Samsung also cautions about benchmarking. I can stop HDTune as soon as I have a reasonable look at the trend.

[Noel Carboni]

That's another advantage to building an array of the things...  Each individual drive in an array of n drives gets 1/n of the total write load, meaning it's a lot harder to use up the total write cycles of the flash.

-Noel

[Hudechrome]

One can spread that over time by replacing the SSD on a schedule corresponding to the overprovision spec. Of course, likely benefits accrue an array other than write extension.

[Noel Carboni]

Just to make sure you're using the terminology correctly...

Overprovisioning refers to buying more storage than you use, so that the SSD internal reorganization processes have plenty of room in which to work.

Lifetime write limits refer to how many much total data you can write to the SSD before the flash memory locations are "worn out". 

The two are somewhat related, because typically any one location can be only be written about 10,000 times, but the controller inside the SSD doesn't always write data to the same locations.  They embody what's called "wear leveling" logic. 

The reality is you can very roughly gauge the lifetime write capacity of a modern SSD by multiplying it's full capacity by a few thousand.

-Noel

[Lundberg02]

Benchmark, schmenchmark. I use one of my 10 gB files to measure data transfer speed. SATA II is never going to give you much, unless you have lots of lanes and RAID 0s.

[Lundberg02]

BTW, for Mac users, Focus Magic 4.0 beta is out, for Snow Leopard and up. In spite of signing up for automatic notifcation three times over the last 18 months, I had to go to their site to discover this. The upgrade is free for previous users.  They did keep their promise to have it out this summer. The Win ver has been available for quite awhile.

[Hudechrome]

Correct. I was being sloppy, simply connecting the thought that the larger the overprovision, the longer you can write to the device but at a cost of actual storage space.

It's all about trade-offs, in any case.If you send 4x my cost by using 4 SSD's and I buy them as they wear and burn the current image, we spend about the same, or maybe less as storage costs go down over time (I'm such an optimist!) and I don't have to shell out in one fell swoop.

There is, no doubt, some interesting considerations here. Thanks for the data.

-L

[Hudechrome]

Look we don't have your files nor your workflow. Benchmarks are designed to be obvjective measuremets of specific parameters that exclude human intrepretation as much as possibe.

I would expect you also think eliminating NIST to be worth while as well.

Who needs standards?

[Lundberg02]

I don't care about benchmarks, as I said. My test is how long it takes the same file to be moved from one disk to another when I try a new computer, operating system or device. I definitely don't care about Windows benchmarks, I expect VMWare to be slower if I ever use it.

If NIST does benchmarks they're probably years late.

[Noel Carboni]

Just to give you an idea...

At the moment I'm auto-aligning 25 layers of an image document that's 17496 x 11664 pixels x 16 bits/channel RGB (I'm experimenting and testing).  Photoshop has used up all the RAM I've alotted it (45 GB), and has gone into swapping.  There are presently two Photoshop temp files totaling 85 GB.

But even in this condition I'm able to work perfectly interactively with this browser and any number of other applications I'm running.  New ones start right up.  You'd hardly know this system is loaded up and working hard on a gargantuan Photoshop task.

SSD-equipped systems load up far better than HDD-based systems.  Thus you get more work done more easily.

-Noel

[Noel Carboni]

I haven't done so lately, have I station_two?  Certainly not intentionally as I understand your situation.

There were some misunderstandings of the past that are water long under the bridge.  Personally I believe you're a true asset here.

-Noel

[Trevor.Dennis]

Noel Carboni wrote:

I haven't done so lately, have I station_two?  Certainly not intentionally as I understand your situation.

There were some misunderstandings of the past that are water long under the bridge.  Personally I believe you're a true asset here.

-Noel

I'll second that — it would be counterproductive to deny folk Station's help and contributions. 

[station_two]

Noel,

Only a few times lately have you used my first name, but it's understandably natural.

You're very gracious to refer to a smattering of brain-damage induced cacophonic posts as misunderstandings. 

[Noel Carboni]

PIP /LI - the command line one would issue on a terminal to MCR (the Monitor Console Routine) of RSX-11 for listing the files in a directory.  PIP stood for "Peripheral Interchange Program".  I figured Richard might remember that one.

I guess you must have been a DCL person, Lawrence.  DIR *.*;*

-Noel

[JJMack]

Noel Carboni wrote:

Remember when computers cost millions of dollars?

Yes they were called mainframes not personal,

[RobertoBlake]

To get  to get everyone back on topic Complex asked a direct question. Complex you  now not only know that SSD's can improve your performance, but now you understand the general performance gains of Layered system instead of flat system, and why many of use multiple harddrives for our respective computer setups. You now understand the concept of internal bandwidth and why the specs concerning this are important when purchasing parts. You also now know a little bit about  RAID and its benef

What else can we help you with?

[complexity]

I also just discovered I cant upgrade just the MB only either as I don't see anyone making LGA 775 CPU with SATA III 6gb, it would also mean a CPU upgrade, but I guess if its a couple of extra hundred to get the max out of the new SSD drives its probably going to be worth it.

[Noel Carboni]

If you don't want to upgrade the mobo there's the possibility of a PCIe based SATA III controller (I have the HighPoint 2720SGL myself).

-Noel