HD's with 32mb cache

[Nikolai]

Hi Guys,
I was wanting to know if a photoshop scratch disk would be faster if it had a 32mb cache rather then a 16mb cache, if so then what are some of the better HD's with a 32mb cache that you can recommend ?

Thank you

[Yellowhello]

Originally Posted by Nikolai

Hi Guys,
I was wanting to know if a photoshop scratch disk would be faster if it had a 32mb cache rather then a 16mb cache, if so then what are some of the better HD's with a 32mb cache that you can recommend ?

Thank you

The only HDD I know of with a 32MB cache is this one: HardwareLogic - Hitachi Deskstar 7k1000 1TB Hard Drive Review

[gvblake22]

In addition to the Hitachi 1TB drive you linked to yellowhello, Hitachi also has a 750GB model with 32MB cache and Seagate makes a 1TB drive with 32MB cache.

The performance gain from more cache is reasonable, but more system memory (RAM) or a faster processor would make a more noticeable performance difference in Photoshop than a hard drive with 32MB cache vs. 16MB.

[Nikolai]

Thanks for that gvblake .... does the frequency of the ram , say 800mhz compared to 1066 mhz make much of a difference in photoshop?

[Quakindude]

I personally have found that the amount of ram is more important than the Mhz. I would go for the lowest latency ram you can get in your price range. I like this set of low latency OCZ ram and have used this very set for well over 8 months.

It would be very helpful if you would make a signature, as requested in the forum rules, so we may better recommend hardware options. Just look at the top of this page and click on UserCP and then Edit Signature. List your current computer specs there.

Here's a link for you to look over.

Living Photoshop: Reap what you Measure

And if anyone tells you that using Windows 64-bit and more than 4GB of ram will be beneficial to you, tune that right out. Adobe has yet to make, AFAIK, a 64-bit version of Photoshop. Even CS3 doesn't have 64-bit support. So while you may be able to run CS2/CS3 on a 64-bit computer with 8GB of ram, Photoshop will only be able to address 4GB since it isn't coded in 64-bit.

The best things to do, IMHO, is get at least 2GB of low latency ram, a high speed HDD for your scratch disk, one of the few times I'll recommend a RAID array and Raptor drives, and a decent 256MB video card.