Sluggish Saving...Primary Data Location ???

[BiggyRat]

Hello...

Running CS3 on a brand-new workstation designed by ADK. This machine has been optimized for performance by the mfg.; & sports a quad-core CPU, 2 big drives; & 4 GB's of RAM.

Still, tho...Photoshop's saving of files & projects seems eternally slow...so, 2 questions:

1) Why?

2) When I installed the program...I was not prompted about choosing a secondary drive for (I forget what Photoshop calls their primary data files).

This PC was optimized for digital audio; & for workstations of this type it is advised to place the primary data (in that case, audio files) on a separate "data" drive. In this way, the OS & audio multitracking programs are on one drive & the audio data is on another, for higher efficiency accessing & hence a more streamlined workflow.

For "graphics" type workstations...is it the photos & various other image files that are supposed to reside on a separate drive?...or in the case of Photoshop...someone told me once that a piece of the program itself (I've forgotten the specific term) is supposed to be placed on a separate drive.

Can someone please direct me on how to set the app up correctly in this regard; & do you think this may be the cause of the problem? (since I certainly expected better performance on a new, state-of-the-art machine).

Thanks,

Biggy Rat

 

[apepp]

...the best setup, some may argue, is to have photoshop use a secondary hard drive for scratch performance, which is used when photoshop runs low on physical RAM. Most users don't have this setup so the primary disk or startup disk is used by default...

...i think scratch disk might be the 'forgotten specific term' you mention...

...check the performance pref hasn't been adjusted all the way to the right, generally leave as is at 70%...

...this link touches on the performance preference now available in CS3:

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/preferences-cs3/page-3.php

...of course photoshop will take a long time to save very large graphics, with many layers involved to PSD for example, a large graphic might be defined as anywhere between 200Mb and higher, but this really depends on the machine spec photoshop is running on...

...obviously a slower CPU will likely struggle with a 50Mb image...

...your setup is a good one though, and PShop CS3 should be running well on it that is for sure...

Andrew

 

[apepp]

...out of interest, do filters run OK?

...a useful tech note here:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb401088

Andrew

 

[apepp]

...also, image bit depth can be a factor, i imagine you are dealing with 8bit and not anything higher?

Andrew

 

[BiggyRat]

Hey...thanks, all...

My Memory Usage slider was set to only 50% (utilizing 866 MB). I slid it to 70% (1200 MB). Also, I've now selected my secondary drive as the 'Sratch' drive. Performance should now be better as a result of these two changes; & I thank you for them.

The thing is...w/ digital audio...when tweaking the OS...it is recommended that 'Processor Scheduling' be set to 'Background Services'; & 'Memory Usage' be set to 'Programs' (just the opposite of Windows defaults). So I'm hoping this isn't part of the problem. I'll be working in the program this weekend; & will report back.

Thanks again,

Biggy Rat

 

[kiddpete]

Audio and video have far more demands for unencumbered disk access than still photos. That's because, at least at the capture stage, they must keep up with a real time process. Audio is, of course, far less demanding than video.

Photoshop scratch disks are aimed at storing temporary data such as the many levels of history that Photoshop maintains while working on a photo. PS needs to store this data quickly lest it be perceived as unresponsive. However, I don't see a logical connection between scratch disk location and saving.

I see this lag when saving also. I think that either PS or Windows is trying to build thumbnails of the files on the disk where you are trying to save your image. Thus, you are forced to wait for the building of an essentially worthless preview image of files on the hard drive. This is frustrating, but I'm not aware of any technique which will speed it up other than faster hardware.