Thanks, Ian. I reached the same conclusion over the weekend after reading one of my
Photoshop books in which they also warned against using a single unpartitioned drive
with Photoshop. You're right, I have an single 80 GB 5400 rpm drive and it is not
partitioned. I plan to buy a second drive, probably 60 GB and 7200 rpm, and I'll set
aside 20 GB on it for Photoshop and SilverFast scratch area. (I know how to use
Photoshop's Preferences to assign the logical drive for scratch area, but didn't know
that you could do the samething with SilverFast. I'll have to figure out how to do
that.) The 7200 rpm should also speed up Photoshop's operaton with large files.
For what it's worth, the error message I was getting was, "Photoshp has caused an
error in <unknown>. Photoshp will now close. If you continue to experience problems,
try restarting your computer." It wasn't exactly a memory error, but I'm sure now
that it was a drive partition problem.
Also, my flatbed scanner, which is capable of generating large files (like my medium
format SS120) has caused similar Photoshop errors from time to time. With the smaller
files from my SS4000, I never had a problem. Guess I was lucky.
Once again, thanks.
In a message dated Mon, 13 Aug 2001 3:36:52 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Ian Lyons
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Re: filmscanners: SilverFast Upgrade Disaster
> I've been delaying doing a defrag because it takes at least 3 or 4 hours with
> an 80 GB hard drive that's half full. This simply forces the issue. Also,
> I'll try SilverFast after the defrag and maybe Photoshop will work and I
> won't have to do all of the reinstalls.
>
>
> If I'm reading you correctly you have one hard drive and only one partition on
>that drive. Like Windows Photoshop creates its on swap file (called the scratch disk
>- temporary work area). Usually when Photoshop throws up a memory error its because
>the scratch disk is full and not because of real memory issues. Unfortunately the
>message is erroneous - the Photoshop scratch disk REQUIRES contiguous hard disk space
>of approximately 5 times the actual amount of ram on your computer. Typically the
>memory error means that your hard disk doesn't have the required amount of contiguous
>space left. Normally this results from the way Windows throws files around the hard
>disk. Quite simply massive hard drives don't solve the problem if we don't properly
>manage the data. Having 50% spare capacity on your drive is meaningless if that 50%
>is made up of tiny chunks spread like pebbles on a beach.
>
> To solve your problem I would partition your 80Gig drive into at "least" four
>partitions. One of these should be dedicated to the Photoshop scratch disk. Given
>that you are working with pretty large files I would and have done on my own computer
>set aside 20Gig of space for the scratch disk - NOTHING else should have excess to
>this partition. Every time you close down Photoshop the scratch file will be cleared
>so defraging isn't an issue. SilverFast also has its own scratch file and again it
>should point to an area of contiguous hard disk space - I usually just pint to the
>same area as Photoshop - 20 gig is a pretty big beach when only Photoshop and its
>plugins use it.
>
> As for your other software and data (including the saved Photoshop images) put the
>on the remaining partitions.
>
>
> Ian
>
>
> Ian Lyons
> http://www.computer-darkroom.com
>
>
>
>
