Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Gary Barnett 
<barnettart@m...> wrote:
The 
> drive should ideally be dedicated only to scratch files, and the 
> remainder partition, if any, to "dead storage" of files unlikely to 
be 
> accessed while you are in Photoshop.


I have a 32Gb WD Raptor (10,000rpm)as my scratch disk (and another 
for virtual memory (page file?)plus a 72Gb one for images that are 
being worked on (and backed up to an IDE device whren completed or 
after a working session). 

The 32 Gb drives are formatted with Fat 32.  I archive, weekly, data 
files from another machine(<2Gb)to the disk designated for the 
scratch file but would never open these data files (last time I 
checked they were not fragmented).  So I have appx 30 Gb of free 
space.  This is the only disk I have indicated for PS in 
preferences.  

When the 4Gb limit is reached, does PS 8 open a new scratch disk in 
this drive, or does it become confused as to what it should do or 
otherwise be inefficient?  Should I reformat the scratch disk to NTFS?

While posting, I would like to add a supplementary: writing files to 
the 72 Gb Raptor- which I do frequently during processing - takes a 
looong time, I guess well over a minute for a c. 1Gb 48 bit layered 
file.  Is this normal.  I had thought of buying another 72Gb Raptor 
and using Raid 0 but all the advice I have had so far is that the 
real write time advantage would be minimal.

I am using an Intel 3.2 GHz processor and 3Gb RAM with other IDE 
devices for storage.

Advice would be much apreciated.

Colin