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Participant
February 15, 2020
Question

Second SSD for scratch disk and/or project files?

  • February 15, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 917 views

Hey guys. I'm getting a new PC for Photoshop work, and wondered if it would be better to get one large SSD for everything, or to get two separate smaller SSDs, one for OS+Photoshop, and the other for project files and/or scratch disk. Thanks!

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1 reply

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 15, 2020

I don't think that makes much difference. One will work as well as the other. I have two working systems, one of each configuration. That was just because one motherboard had two M.2 ports and the other had one.

 

It was different with spinning drives where the read/write head could only be in one place at a time and had to physically move back and forth.

 

 

Participant
February 15, 2020

Cool cool.  Do you recommend an M.2 drive instead of SSD?  I was looking at the Intel 660p, but saw that it doesn't have a very high endurance (tbw) compared to SSDs. I was looking at the Samsung 860 pro instead.  My last build lasted over 10 years, and I'd like this one to as well.  What do you think?

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 15, 2020

All righty.  So, I should have no problem with wear if I'm just using Photoshop and as a regular use computer with the 970 EVO for 10+ years?


Any drive can fail at any time. That's all you can ever know. Wear and reliability are statistical parameters, valid for large numbers. They do not apply to individual units. A drive either fails or it doesn't.

 

Be prepared and have backup, and/or any other resources you might need to rebuild the disk.

 

If wear was a problem, you couldn't use them for the operating system and applications. Some of it is read-only, true, but there's constant read/write to your user account, both by OS and applications. People think a system drive is static, but that's very far from the truth.