A place to discuss the tools you use - printers, scanners, software etc...
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At what point should you consider a bigger hard drive? Mine has 61% left on it. I had read somewhere that you should never go below 50%. Is that right?
If I get a larger one is it possible to have the old hard drive ghosted over to the new one? I am not looking forward to having to reload all my stuff. Lazy I know.
Suzi,

I kind of depends on how big it is to begin with.

I normally like to keep mine below 75% and on my system that translates to 50GB free.

I also run DISKEEPER to optimize the disk fragmentation.

If everything else is ok with your system, I would suggest you get a second internal drive and then transfer my documents from your old system C drive to the new drive.

A 300GB IED drive costs about $100 and a 500GB SATA drive about $140 – sometimes you can get a sale for a lot less. You will probably need an IED drive, but if your motherboard supports SATA, I would go fir SATA.

Most stores will install it for a fee and initialize it get it going for your system to use.

Once you have it installed there is a simple WinXP technique that goes like this

Start up Windows Explorer,

Right click on My Documents, then Properties, then click on the Move button. Windows will copy all your my Documents files and folders over and you are off to the races.

If you are using Organizer, there is another approach to moving and if LR, you will have to create a new catalogue and re-import.

I have set up like this since I started Windows XP there are some great benefits like backups and interoperability if I move to another system.
John
Suzi,

Clarification - I use up to 75% and when only 25% is left, I start to get twitchy. :chickendance:
John
Thanks, John, for the information. I have 2 300gb hard drives. On the main one I have a little over 170 left. The other one is strickly a scatch disk for elements and photoshop. So I should be ok for awhile. Someday I am going to replace both with much larger ones. But like I say in the other post, I would like to be able to have the "C" drive ghosted over so I don't have to reload all my programs. That is such a pain.
Is that program you mentioned better than using xp's defrag??? While I am at it do you know of a really good registery cleaner.
Suzi, it seems to me that using a 300 gb hard drive as a scratch disk is wasting a whole lot of usable space - like 90%. How about partitioning it so you can use a lot more of it for storage? John, what do you think?
Chuck
LR2/CS3/PSE6/Canon 450D, G10/Panasonic LX3
I thought that at first too, Chuck but there has been a few times when I have actually run that out of space. I would be working on several images and when done go to save one to the web and got a message telling that I was out of space. Mesage was like this...there is not enough memory on scratch disk to complete your request. I would have to save it, close CS3 then open it back up to do a "save to the web"
Suzi, I did a little quick research, and it supported your approach. It even suggested that the maximum scratch disk size for Photoshop is 32 TERAbytes (!) so it looks like dedicating your 300 gb disk isn't so wasteful after all....

Please let me know how Photoshop performs after you've bought a set of three 10-terabyte disks.... :D
Chuck
LR2/CS3/PSE6/Canon 450D, G10/Panasonic LX3
Chuck, you have got to be kidding 32 terabytes!!!! Then I am way under staffed so to speak.
Here's one article on the subject of RAM and scratch disk size:

http://photoshopnews.com/2005/04/04/pho ... -ram-fact/
Chuck
LR2/CS3/PSE6/Canon 450D, G10/Panasonic LX3
Umh, wow!

On the system I am using most of the time I have an 80G C drive - SATA and a 500G drive (E:) that I use for My Documents. (The system was a recycle from a company that went out of business - lots of zip and not much of a C: drive - must have done most of the work on the Network).

I assumed that it was "better" to have the scratch disk on the E: drive as Photoshop was accessing the software on C: and I wasn't accessing the E: other than for scratch.

I never saw performance improvement but have stuck with that approach as its gotta be the right one - right?
Most of the stuff I do is photo manipulation and adjustments. Not in to scrapbooking or creating fancy layouts and that seems to be where the more intensive stuff is.

So, I would ask a geek or take it into Staples (or something like that) and ask them if they can install a 3rd hard drive. (Actually, I would know if I could and do it myself).

OR - time to get a new system . . . :chickendance: :chickendance:
John
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