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Best setup for iMac with SSD & HDD? Best location of scratch & home folders

Best setup for iMac with SSD and HDD? Best location of scratch & home folders?

Computer:
iMac 2.93 GHz Quad core i7, 8GB RAM, 1 TB HDD + 256 GB SSD

There is not much info from Apple about the best way to set up an iMac with a Hard Drive and Solid state drive. I’ve looked at a few of the forum posts across the web and came up with a plan and lots of questions. (I do use photoshop frequently, but not on a professional level):

1. I will keep OS and Applications on SSD
2. About moving the home folder: I saw some posts about moving the whole home folder, but it makes more sense to me to only move selected fodlers withing the home folder tomake the best use of the SSD. So will keep the home folder on SSD, but move certain folders (document /music/iphoto/download) to 1 TB HDD via instructions I found on the macintoshperformanceguide website:
cd
sudo cp -r Documents /Volumes/Master
sudo rm -rf Documents
sudo ln -s /Volumes/Master/Documents Documents

3. I would like to get 8 more RAM when I can afford it
4. I will attach an external hard drive for most of my documents and backup storage
5. Now here is where I’m not sure what’s best:
a. Should I partition my internal 1 TB hard drive and use the first partition as a scratch disc for photoshop and other applications? How much should I partition? Is there any benefit to this if the rive is partitioned?
b. Should I use an external drive as a scratch disc?
c. Any advice on a good 1-2 TB external drive?
d. Should I just leave things in factory settings?

Don't assume I know the basics - I got all the above just by searching around. Any advice and commentary is appreciatedThanks.

Message was edited by: sfandtheworld

imac, iMac 2.93 GHz Quad core i7, 8GB RAM, 1 TB HDD + 256 GB SSD

Posted on Jan 5, 2011 12:34 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jan 5, 2011 5:05 PM

If your primary concern is speeding up PS, but the scratch disk on the SSD and max out the ram at 16gb. It's best to put the scratch disk on it's own partition, but with a 256 gb SSD it might not be big enough. If you really want to speed things up you can raid 0 the SSD. You should probably check out these two links

http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Benchmarks/CS5BenchmarkPag e-iMac.html

http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshopCS5-Intro.html
2 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jan 5, 2011 5:05 PM in response to sfandtheworld

If your primary concern is speeding up PS, but the scratch disk on the SSD and max out the ram at 16gb. It's best to put the scratch disk on it's own partition, but with a 256 gb SSD it might not be big enough. If you really want to speed things up you can raid 0 the SSD. You should probably check out these two links

http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Benchmarks/CS5BenchmarkPag e-iMac.html

http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshopCS5-Intro.html

Jan 6, 2011 8:35 AM in response to Jeff Donald

Thanks for the advice and the links. yes, I would like to speed up ps as much as possible.

I wonder if putting the scratch disc on the same drive as the OS would cause them to interfere with each other? Even if they are on different partitions, they would not be able to be accessed at the same time, or could they? That's why I was wondering if I should place scratch disc on the internal HDD -- but then I don't know how much to partition for it (or to partition at all?)

ALso, I read on a few places that too much read/write on the SSD wears it down over time? Is this more of a theoretical concerns - it does not make sense to me since it has no moving parts!

thanks again for the advice ... I'm gonna go digest those links 🙂

Best setup for iMac with SSD & HDD? Best location of scratch & home folders

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