Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Gellman on January 14, 2009, 01:41:12 pm
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Can anyone recommend what are the fastest, most reliable configurations for using an external drive as a scratch disk on a laptop computer? I'm interested in purchasing either a new MBP or possibly a Lenovo Thinkpad W700 or Sony AW series.
Also, while I realize that even the best laptops are not as fast as the best desktop computers, I am hoping to begin using a laptop as my primary computer, with an external monitor, such as a NEC 2690. My current computer is a five year old Dell Pentium 4 with 2 GB RAM. Will today's high end laptops with 64 bit OS, Core Duo processors (or whatever) and 4 GB RAM be much faster than my old desktop?
Thanks in advance to anyone who replies.
John
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I can't imagine an external drive used as a scratch disk being any better using either USB or Firewire. Unless you have an eSata port - you would probably best upgrade to a faster (7200rpm) drive - as most notebooks come with 5400 or even 4500rpm drives.
If you are looking to a new laptop -I'd reccomend going Vista 64bit for your O/S as it's natively able to address RAM beyond 3GB. Both Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2 run as 64bit applications under Vista 64.
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Yes, I was planning on Vista 64 O/S with 4 GB RAM, as well as getting a 7200 rpm hard drive. I am leaning heavily towards a MBP and adding Vista. But the MacBook only has one hard drive. So I am wondering if it's best to use the internal hard drive as scratch disk, which Adobe says is a no-no, or to use an external drive. Firewire 800 is available, but I would need to get an Express Card 34 to add an eSata port. Even then, I don't know how fast the add-on eSata port would be compared to one that is built in. Of course, you can't get one built in.
I probably should have posted this on the Computers and Peripherals board, but it's too late now.
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The new MBP's are nice - but I find the 15' 4gb limitation dissapointing & I'm done lugging arounnd 17". I'm quite impressed with some of the newer stuff Dell is doing:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/produ...;l=en&s=bsd (http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/workstation_precision_m4400?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd)
I just wish *everyone* else would get the power connector that Macbooks use; having to spend $200 to replace a soldered PS connector, or worse, and entire mainboard is just ridiculous . . . .
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I think I found the definitive answer.
Speeding up Photoshop with an External Drive by Ctein appeared in The Online Photographer.
Anyone interested may view it HERE (http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/05/speeding-up-pho.html).
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My impression and experience for the MBP 15inch 4 G ram was just so so and not reliable when I was using an Esata express card with an external raid 1 Hdd setup.
Images download were fast but corrupted in mac OSX while it was OK in windows xp (bootcamp). However, it crashed often in xp that I had to uninstall and then reinstall the card drv. I just wish the MBP has its own esata port.
Besides, speed is not fast compare to my desktop which is 16 G ram quad core intel. Perhaps I was expecting too much on the MBP. I was rather disappointed that it can't handle large volume heavy duty task as compare to my desktop. It just failed from my recent assignment: 30G ids mk3 images daily, extracting raw to jpg for further HDR panorama stiching. without wall power, the battery on the road last less than 3 hrs .......... My opinion, for serious work, u can't rely on MBP