New Build, Need help with storage setup

kellyj525

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Jul 6, 2012
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My brother is building a new computer for me and I have the following devices on the way. I would appreciate advice on how to set these up to optimize performance for primarily Lightroom 4 & Photoshop. I have CS6. I will be putting MS Office on as well.

1 qty - Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F90GBGT-BK 2.5" 90GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
2 qty - Corsair Force Series GS CSSD-F180GBGS-BK 2.5" 180GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
1 qty - Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

I already have 2 1 TB External drives. Any new storage I will have to wait a bit on.

Thank you in advance for your input :).



 
send all the ssd back and pick up one good 256g ssd. most new mb have two 6g sata ports from intel that you can raid two drives. raiding ssd just add a level of failure and problems with an ssd. ssd run fine on stock mb in achi mode fine. your better off putting the ssd on one 6g port and the hd on the other. then use the 3g ports for the dvd-rom or blue ray player.
use the extra money for more ram or a better cpu cooler. I have an intel 520 128g drive. it set as os boot and i have a 2tb drive as the data drive. games and programs i dont use daily are installed on the data drive.
 
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ok. so you need one SSD for an OS and another one to render/scratch disk. the platter for storage. what is the 90Gb SSD for?
 

kellyj525

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Jul 6, 2012
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Somehow, I got it in my head that I should have the OS (90GB), Lightroom and Photoshop all on their own ssd. Considering how expensive these things are, sending something back would be great. I read somewhere in one of the adobe forums that Lightroom will perform better if it is designated if on its own. Now, I think I may have been confused. Is this thought process all wrong???

I wasn't planning on doing a RAID but rather JBOD. I have never taken this much consideration into a system and admit I am a complete novice on the technical aspects, though I am learning now :). Funny how you decide to get a killer camera and a couple of great lenses and that all parlays into another $2500 on computers and the $$ for the needed programs. I am sitting here wondering wtf have I done to myself???
 
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ok let say first off that i am not a video editing professional, though i have done a little editing myself, i would not even consider myself a novice since i still get lost in the menus; but i believe i understand the technical aspects of a editing machine.

the best set up for what type of budget you seem to have would be an SSD for the OS and programs, a faster mechanical drive for the scratch/rendering drive; it will bottleneck if you have the scratch disk and program on the same drive (but i think you understand that) and a big platter for all your media storage.

it really would benefit with having one of the 180 Gb SSDs as an OS drive. that will give you enough room w/o having to worry about file managing to conserve space as it would be with a 90 Gb drive. you could get away with a 90 but that will cause quite a few nightmares down the road.

using an SSD as a scratch disk would make rendering extremely fast but pretty much shortens the lifespan and making it practically disposable since the lifespan is measure in disk writes. (you can write to it only so much before it needs replaced) the closest mechanical drive would be a 10,000 rpm veloci-raptor for performance; unless you can afford ~$100 to replace the SSD constantly. so if you can send back/replace the 90/180 SSDs with:
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLHX 300GB $149.99
even though it will still be only 1/3 the speed of an SSD it will last for years instead of a few months or weeks even.

as far as storage there are several configurations you can have though the general rule of thumb is the more the better; HD content can eat up a lot of room and even a 1Tb drive might end up being a little small; esp if you are storing the finished projects on it. since you have a 1Tb WD black you can use that for the finished projects and the 2 external 1Tb drives to import media/ storage. ideally it might be advantageous to replace the external drives with one of a few 2+Tb interal drives for storage. (this is where some whacky raid configuration can go, if you care to torture yourself like that).

and it would benefit you to look at having a back up strategy in place in case of a disk failure. looking at something like Acronis® True Image™ Home 2012 so if your SSD fails you can be up and running again without the having to re-install everything and backing up the "projects" disk so you do not experience a financial or time loss having to lose or re-edit the finished projects.

this is by no means a perfect disk configuration. there are RAID0 set ups with 2 WD veloci-raptors for scratch/rendering disks that will substantially decrease for rendering. but i think what i have suggested and a brief explanation why will be a decent "jumping off point" that isn't an excessive start up cost.

hope it helps.
 

kellyj525

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Jul 6, 2012
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Thanks so much for the reply, it does help. I think I will put the OS and MS Office one one of the 180's and the other for Lightroom, and use the 90gb for Photoshop. Back that all up to both the 2 TB hard drive and then externals until I can afford the Drobo or something. Does that make any sense?
 
Have you visited the Adobe forums and help pages? There is quite a bit of useful information there.

The typical solution is one ssd for Microsoft Windows 7, software applications, and utilities. A second ssd used as a scratch disk. Hard disk drive(s) for data/image storage.

looniam - Would it be more appropriate to say the lifespan of an ssd used as a scratch disk actually depends on how much writing you do and what type of files you are working with. For example, photos do not require a lot of capacity but videos do.
 
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may i ask for a link where you got the idea to install the those apps on a separate SSD?
i have never heard of that before.
 
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thank you for pointing out my error of thinking this was a video editing build - sorta makes quite a few suggestions moot
[:lutfij:1]
 

kellyj525

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Jul 6, 2012
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looniam, i think I may have read that in adobe forums. Yesterday, I made the huge mistake of going into the adobe forum and while I was there pop-up support came on, thought I'd try it before I spent $2300 on a new computer build.

I could not get a straight or clear answer from the adobe support person I got. I asked the same question three different ways and was told the the best thing was to get as much as much ram as I could fit into computer (32 coming my way). I asked him several times...how much room do I need on a photoshop ssd and all he could say was as much as I can afford. What about lightroom... as much as you can afford. I have read several articles now and and forums to the point of total confusion.

I posted in computer build forum for help but my wish list wasn't working (and I wasn't aware) from newegg so after hours of no reply I just pushed buy and here I am now.

Anyway...I am currently learning some things about video and will utilize your great info down the line :). By the way....what do you think about your wd caviar green? I was thinking of getting one but saw a few bad reviews, especially on the 3 tb.
 
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ok, i just do not understand the advantage to having the program on a separate disk. the scratch disk yes but the app itself. . . seems it could lead to some configuration problem down the road. i have an older version of the master suite collection that a friend gave me a few years ago when they upgraded; it only takes 8 gigs of space on a disk. sorry, i just can't wrap my head around that.

as johnnylucky pointed out; there is a large difference between using a scratch disk for image/photo manipulation/editing and video editing. so i would change what i suggested before and believe a 180 Gb SSD for OS and all APPS; the other 180 for a scratch disk and the 2 Tb black for media storage.

with the WD 3Tb greens; the quality of WD hard drives have seem to have not been as good since recovering from the halt in production since the flood in the thailand factory. a 'bright spot' with that problem is if a hard drive does fail, it will happen very early in its life and is usually more of an inconvenience than a catastrophic problem. but i will have to admit; i have been a loyal WD user for 18 years and haven't been disappointed with any of my purchases, YET.

though there are limitations that older motherboards and newer motherboards with an older BIOS face when being able to access the full 3 Tb on a disk that size. in the case of the latter a BIOS update will usually solve the problem, with the former a new motherboard is needed. then windows also faces a limitation that is solved when it is partitioned and then formatted with a GPT instead of MBR; a relatively painless process. here is an explanation.

as far as what i suggested for setting up your disk configuration; i cannot claim to be the know all guru on it. if you do find a better answer for why there is a need to separate photoshop and lightroom other than "as much as you can" then go with it. if you pick up a 3Tb green for storage then the 2Tb black might make for good project storage if you advance toward video editing.

and again, since what you are doing has a large monetary value, have a back up strategy. and sorry i just keep thinking that at this time you will end up having an extra SSD.