I am in process of building a new multi-use PC (CS6/LR4 etc., some gaming, and general use (MS Office, Web, etc.).
...yet I keep reading on the web recommendations for O/S drive to be small sized (e.g., 64 GB, 120 GB).
My original thinking on this was:
C: - 512 GB SSD (boot) with O/S (and software)
E: - 2 TB photo drive (external Raid 1 enclosure) connected via USB 3 (e-sata also possible)
F: - 1 TB HDD for document storage
Z: - 120 GB SSD as Scratch disk (noting that I would also investigate using a portion of the RAM as a RAMDISK as well (for Scratch) to see if that is useful or not)
Or would this be a better approach:
C: - 120 GB SSD (boot) with O/S only
D: - 512 GB SSD for program files (I would need to look up how that can be done automatically in Win 7 - i.e. have it recognize that the two program file directories are not located on C: if that is possible)
E: - 2 TB photo drive (external Raid 1 enclosure) connected via USB 3 (e-sata also possible)
F: - 1 TB HDD for document storage
Z: - partition a portion of the 512 GB SSD as Scratch disk (this may be nonsense?)
Thoughts/advice would be appreciated
This is how I would do it:
C: 160 or 256 GB SSD (for OS, Adobe and Apps only - no data)
I like to keep 50% of my OS free. Ideally this should be no less than 30%.
Future file systems are going to need more resources than NTFS
You could partition this drive for dual boot or different file systems, etc
You could keep more than one 'image' of your system with a bigger drive
D: Game Drive - depending on how many games you want. This drive will also be used for temp game files so if you can afford SSDs I've heard they offer excellent speed advantage over 7,200rpm drives. I don't have much experience on gaming infrastructure.
E: 512 SSD for temp/page/cache drive. You can set this drive in Adobe's settings and it will use this drive exclusively for this purpose. All your project files will also reside here. When you're done, these files can be archived.
F: 1 TB drive for documents and work data
NAS: Take your other drives and setup a FreeNas on the ZFS File system in RAID Z2 (RAID 6 equivalent), or use Windows Home Server. If you want to bunch up multiple types of drives in RAID, and don't want to learn or get your hands dirty with new technology, get a Synology system. You can use parts from your older computer for the NAS, if most of them is in working condition. The older computer can also be a render farm - for batch processing in the background.
The NAS becomes your 'Read drive and backup drive' if you're working with images. If you're working with video, then I suggest you use a separate Read drive, in which case the RAID 1 setup is good enough, running on software RAID.
The NAS can also hold your movies, music, and can feed a HTPC if you want it to. A typical low-budget NAS should atleast have 4 bays (for future proofing and expansion) and support GigE. It should give a typical speed of 50 MB/s, and can be transmitted wireless.
Over and above this, use either Google Drive or Amazon S3 to backup your critical stuff. I strongly recommend more than one cloud storage service. I use GD, S3 and iCloud. I'm also seriously considering Backblaze.
In this way, your media files are separate and always ready for use by different systems (computer, ipad, mobile, internet, wi-fi, etc). Your game drive is isolated. In the future, you don't have to start from scratch if one part needs to change.
Hope this helps.