Distributing OS, Photoshop & ACR, Scratch, Caches, DNGs, wrkng TIFFs among SSDs?

[markwilliam]

For optimal performance in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS5 (I will soon upgrade to CS6 or CC), how should I distribute my OS, apps, Scratch, Caches, DNGs, and working TIFFs among these drives?:

120 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
(connected via internal 6G SATA)
240 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
(connected via internal 6G SATA)
960 GB OWC Mercury Accelsior SSD
(connected via Thunderbolt TB1 external OWC Helios unit)

(Also, irrelevant to performance: multiple individual hard drives connected via eSATA and USB3, not RAIDed together [these are for bootable backup of the OS; for backup of all of the above; for archives of past work; for backup of archives of past work, etc.; on site and off site.)

The Accelsior SSD, connected by TB1, is by far the fastest drive. Would partitioning and devoting different parts of it to different functions help?

I'm able to fit the OS, apps, email, etc. on the 120 GB SSD. But I don't assume that I should.

Here's the most relevent info about the rest of my hardware:
Hardware Overview:

Model Name:   iMac
Model Identifier:   iMac12,2
Processor Name:   Intel Core i7
Processor Speed:   3.4 GHz
Number of Processors:   1
Total Number of Cores:   4
L2 Cache (per Core):   256 KB
L3 Cache:   8 MB
Memory:   32 GB
Boot ROM Version:   IM121.0047.B1F
SMC Version (system):   1.72f2

Many thanks,

Mark

[tived]

Hi,

its been covered extensively over the years that having multiple disk/drives for separate tasks is more efficient then having just one large one or a couple of large disks. Looking at your disk collection, you have obviously followed this, so, so far so good.

All your disks looks like good quality disks, so its more a matter of deciding on what goes where.

I would use your 240 as your OS/App disk, the 120 as your Cache/Swap/Temp disk and your 940 as your data disk (I would not have more then one partition on each disk) - I would like to add some backup though :-)

My own setup, on a windows machine, is similar, except I have a few more disks :-)
I use 8x SSD's (128GB) as my boot disk, I have 12x SSD (120GB)as my temp disk and I have 8x HDD's (2TB) as my work in progress and an external 8x HHD (3TB) as my backup unit, as well as individual disks (2-3TB) as backup away from the office. Its a lot of disks but I can push through 4gb/sec with the wind in my back :-) LOL

The internal disk are running of two Raid controllers 1x Areca 1882ix-24 with 4GB cache and I have an IBM M1015 8channel for the 8 internal HDD's (this is the weak link in the system)

All the best

Henrik

[markwilliam]

Hi Henrik.

Thank you so much for this information.

That sounds like a very fast setup. If I understand you, "12x SSD (120GB)" means a RAID array of 12 SSDs serving as one volume. Is that right? In which case your fastest volume is for temp (scratch and caches), NOT for work in progress files. If I were to follow your lead on this then my Accelsior PCI SSD would be for temp/scratch/caches (even though it's larger than it needs to be for that function). So I wonder: should I use that Accelsior PCI SSD for temp (scratch and caches) AND for work in progress? I'm accustomed to putting work in progress files on a volume separate from my scratch/cache volume. But perhaps this Accelsior PCI SSD, connected by Thunderbolt 1, is so much faster than the internal SSD connected by 6g SATA that I should keep both temp and work files on it?

Thanks,

Mark

[deejjjaaaa]

I am not using Macs, but on PC platform there are products like http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php where with enough RAM you can get a faster (than SSD/RAID) virtual HDD in memory for temp. files - I 'd guess such things exist for OSX too

[tived]

Hi Mark,

There isn't a particular reason why I am using the 12x SSD's for my temp drive other then I needed 1TB of temps space for a project I was working on last year. If I could be bothered to rebuild I would probably swap it around so that my OS/APP's run on the 12x ...because I am only have PCIe 2 connections on the motherboard, I am may be maxing out the bandwidth. Newer boards have PCIe 3 which again is much faster and you can have more disks... my controller is PCIe 3 but replacing mainboard, CPU's and ram is just too expensive and filled with headaches (probably why many of you choose to go with a ReadyToGo Mac :-) ) but they are just too slow.

If you are not working on really big files e.g. multiple gigabytes in size then your 120/128GB SSD is fine for scratch/temp disk

The most time consuming task for the computer and this for all (PC and Mac) is writing to disk - so the faster you can get your read/write the faster your computer will be....Obviously CPU, GPU and ram is important, but these days they are all so fast, it really only storage that hasn't made the same speed progress, as the 3 others have.

You have some very nice drives from OWC, they have some really nice products - the only thing to add to your system is a backup system via Thunderbolt and you are set

All the best

Henrik

[markwilliam]

Thanks deejjjaaaa. I could probably figure out how to make a RAM disk out of some of my RAM. But my iMac is maxed out with 32GB of OWC RAM and it seems like it's best devoted to RAM, no? If I had much more RAM, then I might do well devote some of it to a RAM disk, but I don't have more on this machine.

[markwilliam]

Hi again Henrik. Thanks for your message. I'm able to fit my OS and all apps and email and such on the 120GB SSD, so it seems I might as well use the 240GB SSD for something else. You think it's faster to just have scratch and caches on the 960GB Accelsior SSD (along with the work-in-progress DNGs and TIFFs) than to put scratch and caches on the 240GB SSD? If scratch and caches and DNGs and TIFFs were all on the same drive then they would of course be competing with one another for bandwidth, but perhaps the read incompressible rate of 640 MB/s and write incompressible rate of 400 MB/s of the Accelsior connected via Thunderbolt 1 is fast enough so that there's more bandwidth left over for scratch and caches there than there is on the 240GB SSD with its read incompressible rate of 270 MB/s and its write incompressible rate of 170 MB/s? Any advice on how I can know which way of distributing this stuff is faster? --Mark

[deejjjaaaa]

Thanks deejjjaaaa. I could probably figure out how to make a RAM disk out of some of my RAM. But my iMac is maxed out with 32GB of OWC RAM and it seems like it's best devoted to RAM, no? If I had much more RAM, then I might do well devote some of it to a RAM disk, but I don't have more on this machine.

you can compare what is the amount of your temp files vs how much RAM ACR/PS are using while still allowing you to work comfortably... may be "28 + 4" split or "30 + 2" 'd still make sense.

[Torbjörn Tapani]

Do not install the system and apps on the smallest drive. You will regret it.

A SSD performs best when there is some free space left.

[tived]

Good point Torbjorn!

Do not install the system and apps on the smallest drive. You will regret it.

A SSD performs best when there is some free space left.