What is the most efficient setup of storage? NVME, HDD, SSD

[Nach5CFC]

Hi, I work with Photoshop, in high resolution, 150ppp, with 2x5mts of images (I make sublimated indumentary), and I want to know what is the best setup to my storage, thinking in NVME, SSD (SATA or M.2) and HDD.

Right now, I have only one SSD m.2 (not nvme) of 240gb, where I have SO and Photoshop (and some other light programs), and a 2TB HDD with all of my files to work.

I want to know if it can be more efficient if I put my files to work on a SSD or NVME (not for ever, but while I work on them [1-2 weeks]), or if it can damage it, or reduce its useful life.
I'm planning to get a 500gb NVME (Kingston Fury Renegade), to SO and Windows, and maybe one more, or other kind of SSD (maybe just a Kingston SSD A400) but of 500gb or 1TB, SSD or NVME, but with less speed, for my current files to work, and keep my 2TB HDD (and maybe add one more on the future) for my files after work. What do you think? Which is the best storage setup to use Photoshop? Looking for speed on workflow.

Obviously, the speed of workflow also depends in huge way of the RAM and the CPU, but I'm only talking about the optimal setup of storage, ignoring the other components.

[Trevor.Dennis]

It's difficult to answer your question without at least knowing what motherboard your system has, if it is a PC, because that determins how many m.2 slots you have.  I have 5.5Tb of NVMe storage, and have mostly retired the HDDs I have had, but still use an 8Tb HDD to archive and back up.  Solid state storage is getting cheaper all the time, and IME is much more reliable than mechanical drives, and NVMe are crazy fast compared to HDDs so use them if you have the slots and can afford them.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Looking at your post again, a fast drive for Photoshop Scratch Space can have a big impact on performance.  Check out the root directory of your primary scratch drive when you have a big project open, and see how much space Photoshop temp files are using?  That can be tens of gigabytes, and it will be written to and read from constantly, and especially if you don't have a lot of RAM. 

You are using Windows, so open the Task Manager and click on the Performance tab, and monitor CPU, Memory and Disk use while using Photoshop.  That will give you an indication on where to improve system resources.  FWIIW, I chose to stick with 64Gb of RAM with a recent new system, because that's what I had in the previous system, and Photoshop never seemed to get close to using its allocated memory.

[D Fosse]

As Trevor says.

You need to open the case and look at your motherboard, and see how many M.2 ports you have. Usually there will be two, but on a newer board there could be three or even four. 1 TB or 2 TB NVMe isn't really expensive these days.

Drive wear is a vastly overrated issue. What few people realize is that even on a system drive with nothing else on it, there will be constant read and write activity. Your Windows user account is a beehive of constant activity. It's very far from "read-only". So putting other files there, or the Photoshop scratch disk, makes no difference.

Inasmuch as there exists an ideal setup, I would say a system drive with OS/applications plus the Photoshop scratch disk is a natural. That should be 1 TB, anything more isn't really necessary, any less is too little.

Note that there is a real speed advantage to the newer generation 4.0 PCIe interface, used by the NVMe drive, as opposed to the older generation 3.0. But the motherboard has to support it.

The importance of RAM (or large amounts of it) has decreased significantly since the NVMes arrived on the scene. Now the Photoshop scratch disk is for all practical purposes instant, and it's no longer the bottleneck it once was. Yeah, I know, it's not "instant" and theoretically I'm sure RAM is still faster - but the point is, you're no longer sitting around waiting for it. If you ask me, 32 GB RAM is really enough now.