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Posted on 09/11/08 10:58:23 AM |
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Meltonian
Highlight Hermit Posts: 90 Reply  |
Flash drive as scratch disk
Is it possible to format a high capacity USB flash drive as the primary scrach disk? If so, would the write speeds be too slow to have any benefit? |
Posted on 09/11/08 5:24:00 PM |
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dave.cox
Marquee Master Posts: 518 Reply  |
Re: Flash drive as scratch disk
That is the problem with flash drives. They are very slow. I don't believe you would see any benefit. |
Posted on 09/11/08 9:14:58 PM |
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Meltonian
Highlight Hermit Posts: 90 Reply |
Re: Flash drive as scratch disk
That's what I feared. I've got no room for another internal hard drive as I already have two on a RAID setup. I presume I'm right in thinking that I can't use one of these as a scratch disk because the computer sees them as a single drive. |
Posted on 10/11/08 00:15:30 AM |
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cy98
** Posts: 104 Reply |
Re: Flash drive as scratch disk
In the PhotoShop Forum these is some discussions on use of flash and raid as scratch disks. They seem to also think flash drives are too slow. Might do a search there. Here is one link for raid vs physical drive. Not exactly your question but may help. http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c0576fd/0 |
Posted on 10/11/08 08:46:59 AM |
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Meltonian
Highlight Hermit Posts: 90 Reply |
Re: Flash drive as scratch disk
Thanks Cy, much appreciated. |
Posted on 10/11/08 1:57:48 PM |
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dave.cox
Marquee Master Posts: 518 Reply |
Re: Flash drive as scratch disk
Although you may not have room for another internal drive, there are ways to get external high speed drives that will work. USB would work, but still isn't fast enough. However, if you have firewire, you could add an external firewire drive, that should work fine. |
Posted on 10/11/08 2:36:56 PM |
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Paul 2007 thru 2010
Lego Legend Posts: 361 Reply |
Re: Flash drive as scratch disk
It makes you wonder why Windows (or at least Vista) has the facility to use a USB flash memory device to "speed up" windows. I can't imagine what it could possibly put on there that would not be better off on the HD. The mind boggles. |
Posted on 10/11/08 7:41:41 PM |
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vibeke
Kreative Kiwi Posts: 2166 Reply  |
Re: Flash drive as scratch disk
Why not use an external drive to store your photographs, and then use part of one of your main drives as a scratch drive. That way you could now doubt free up a lot of space. |
Posted on 10/11/08 7:59:55 PM |
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dave.cox
Marquee Master Posts: 518 Reply |
Re: Flash drive as scratch disk
Vibeke, Actually, that's a good idea. For storage you can also use CD's, DVD's, RAM Disks, Internet storage, etc. I quite often move older content off to DVD or Ram disks. That way it is off of my hard drive, but I haven't lost the materials. |
Posted on 11/11/08 09:34:41 AM |
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Meltonian
Highlight Hermit Posts: 90 Reply |
Re: Flash drive as scratch disk
Thanks Vibeke and Dave. I actually have plenty of room on my internal drives but as they are on a RAID setup they are both treated as my C drive. Since Photoshop is installed on this drive, there would surely be no advantage to using it/them as a scratch disk. The main problem is that I don't really understand how RAID works - how does the system decide which drive to use and what happens if one of them fails? I heard that one drive mirrored the other as a backup but if that's the case how does it account for the combined storage space? |
Posted on 11/11/08 2:07:02 PM |
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dave.cox
Marquee Master Posts: 518 Reply |
Re: Flash drive as scratch disk
Hi Graham, The way a RAID drive works, depends very much on how it is configured. If you are setup for data mirroring, then what you have stated is correct. That is sometimes known as RAID level 1. With a mirrored drive, you have 2 complete images of your system, one on each drive. If one fails, the other is your backup. You should immediatley replace the failed drive, and let the RAID system rebuild the failed unit. If you want additional information on different RAID levels, Check out this description on Wikipedia. |
Posted on 11/11/08 3:22:56 PM |
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Meltonian
Highlight Hermit Posts: 90 Reply |
Re: Flash drive as scratch disk
Thanks Dave! |