partitioning

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koffiejunkie

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bwana mentioned this before, and since I'm about to replace the disc in my MBP, I think it's a good time to know my options. I'm no stranger to extensive partitioning (coming from a UNIX background) but I don't see the motivation for doing this on my Mac

What are the benefits to creating a scratch partition for Photoshop? It seems to make sense if it's a desktop with a separate disc, but on a single disc surely it's no better than simply letting the OS swap if it runs out of memory? Or am I misunderstanding "scratch"?

Is there any reason I would want to do this?

And on the subject, does anyone know if there's any volume management for OSX, similar to LVM in Linux?
 
Sure - its better when the scratch disk is on a different drive but having it on a separate partition means that it at least always has X amount of un-fragmented space at its disposal even as your primary partition fills up.
 
Hmm, OK. I don't do enough with Photoshop to warrant reserving precious disc space to it. If I'm about to do something big I'll most likely work at home anyway, in which case I can use an external disc. I have a 100GB 7200rpm notebook disc that's prefect for odd little jobs like that :)
 
koffiejunkie said:
Hmm, OK. I don't do enough with Photoshop to warrant reserving precious disc space to it. If I'm about to do something big I'll most likely work at home anyway, in which case I can use an external disc. I have a 100GB 7200rpm notebook disc that's prefect for odd little jobs like that :)
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If you're not using PS much then its probably not worth it even though you're hardly going to notice 5 or even 10gb missing. You can always re-partition later.

Wouldnt using an external probably slow things down even more than not having one at all?
 
bwana said:
If you're not using PS much then its probably not worth it even though you're hardly going to notice 5 or even 10gb missing. You can always re-partition later.
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Tell me that when you have only 2GB free :) Those 500GB drives had better become available soon.

bwana said:
Wouldnt using an external probably slow things down even more than not having one at all?
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If it's firewire? Even if it's USB2, I think the latency would still be less than trying to read a big file and pushing it onto swap on the same physical platter.
 
koffiejunkie said:
Once I get my hands on one - there isn't stock anywhere. I do have a 5400rpm 500GB lying around, and I'm sooooooo tempted to shove it in, but it's a big job.
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That makes me feel a bit better about settling for the 5400RPM 500GB drive for my MB: the shipping date for the 7200RPM kept on slipping, so i gave up. Looks like I'd still be waiting.
 
I just finished fitting the 5400rpm 500GB drive. It works as expected. Now I'm just waiting for stock of the 7200rpm 500GB drive...

It's quite a job - not something I'm keen to do too often.
 
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