Photo Shop and working with a Drobo storage.

[paulr]

Any drive that's more than 50% full will be dramatically slower than when it was new. It's not just fragmenting; your data will start occupying physical drive regions that are closer to the spindle, where linear speeds are slowest. It just takes more time to read and write data. I keep my data drives until half full, and then re-purpose them as backup drives (where performance doesn't matter ... I'll fill a backup drive all the way).

As far as scratch drives for PS, it's questionable economics to try to speed things up with fast, dedicated drives. This used to be the only way, back when PS was limited to a couple of gigabytes of RAM. Now it's generally better just bump up the ram so you use scratch as little as possible. Especially true if you don't have an earlier mac pro (like mine) that uses ridiculously expensive error-correcting DIMMs.

It's helpful to turn on the "efficiency" info option on the bottom left of the main PS window. This will tell you the degree to which you're using the scratch disk. 100% efficiency means not at all. Once you get to 70%, you'll probably notice the slowdown. There are many things besides file size effect scratch use. Probably the biggest one is the number of history states you ask PS to remember. If you can give up a little history, you'll use less scratch. Also the nature of the operations you do in PS. Anything that effects the whole image is going to require more scratch than something that just effects a single image tile. And of course, anything that effects multiple layers will require more than something that effects just one. Photoshop actually writes the minimum number of tiles to scratch that it can get away with.

If things get sluggish and you've tried everything else, you can purge the history states, and a lot of other cached stuff (edit menu). This gives a fresh start.

[Greg Miller]

As far as scratch drives for PS, it's questionable economics to try to speed things up with fast, dedicated drives. This used to be the only way, back when PS was limited to a couple of gigabytes of RAM. Now it's generally better just bump up the ram so you use scratch as little as possible. Especially true if you don't have an earlier mac pro (like mine) that uses ridiculously expensive error-correcting DIMMs.

It's still the case. The logic has always been maximize RAM above all else. Once the RAM is consumed then Photoshop starts paging to a swap file. At that point having a dedicated fats drive will keep performance as optimal as possible. And since that tends to happen a lot more frequently than saving files, I would do that before replacing a drive that is 50% full. I have been managing and dealing with high performance databases for many many years (even being on the bleeding edge of implementing very very large databases), and I have never heard anyone suggest replacing drives when they were 50% full. Even if performance degrades significantly at 51% full, I can't imagine it making a meaningful difference as seldom as most people save a file. IF it adds 2 seconds to saving a gigabyte file, who is really going to notice,

[Preston]

Bob,

I was looking for a backup solution and did quite a bit of research on the various 'small business' NAS units. I agree with Greg regarding the units from Synology. They are definitely worth a serious look. Go to Anandtech and look at their in-depth reviews.

One of the best things I did was to install an SSD (Intel) as my OS drive. It's a 240 GB and contains my OS (Windoze), programs and my 'working' files. The performance difference over the standard HD's is pretty impressive. I have a pretty decent box and CS6 will open a 'working' 1.2 GB PSD in about 7 seconds--not too shabby. If you have a large enough SSD to hold your working files, and you have a goodly amount of RAM, PS likely won't be going to the scratch disk. Keep in mind that SSD's don't like to be more that 75-90% full. They use the unused space for TRIM, so don't overfill them. Also SSD's should not be defragmented, doing so will reduce their life.

You don't mention which version of PS you're using, but here's a couple of articles from Adobe regarding fine tuning of Photo Shop. They helped me.

CS5: http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/20...rformance.html

CS6:
http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/2012/10/how-to-tune-photoshop-cs6-for-peak-performance.html

--P

[Light Guru]

The Drobo is a 14 tb mirrored drive , and yes I have a lot on it right now

Mirrored to what? The redundancy djrob os do is NOT mirroring, so if you are mirroring then what are you mirroring to and how is that mirroring set up. If you really are mirroring in some weird setup this could slow things down.

To best answer your question about why it is being slow you need to provide more info.

How full is the drive? - total space used vs actual storage capacity. Note that when setting up the Drobo if you choose a larger total potential capacity then the capacity of the drives in the Drobo the mac finder will show the potential capacity. For example I set my Drobo up with a potential max size of 8TB. I currently have 4 1TB drives in it. The the Mac OS finder says I have a 8TB drive but I don't really have 8TB right now. I could replace drives with larger ones to get there though.

How is the Drobo connected to your computer? Not all computer connections are created equal when it comes to speed?

[bob carnie]

Lots of good advice and comments...

To be very frank... when it comes to computers I am a complete luddite, I can operate photoshop to my needs , I understand the numbers and how they relate to the materials I work with, but I think I missed the boat on technical computer knowledge. I use CS3 at work which is linked to the system I am discussing right now, at home I use CS6.
With my new move I am considering going to CS on Cloud package for multiple stations..
I think I need to address this storage situation now before it becomes a nightmare. I have so much critical data on the Drobo right now and if something were to happen to that information I will need a surgeon to take out the pen lodged in my skull.


I am going to have someone who is a geek come in see this thread and see if I can answer some of the questions and observations you folks are making. He can look completely at this
system and give me the answers some are asking..

Light Guru.. you scare me with your question... because I cannot answer your question Mirrored to what ??


In my lab setup it must be noted that I am using different generation equipment... Lambda , creo and imacan scanners 1995-99 Mac Pro- Epson 7800 - 2006-2008 - PS3 and PS6 now going to Cloud.
Also driving the the scanners are and assortment of older macs and in some cases IBM computers with software that is all different.

Unfortunately for me Or fortunately my world is one of various platforms and I wish that I could just use one computer, one scanner, one printer- this would allow me to understand and learn faster, but I am trying to understand 20 years of technology and still run the business. Also like many of you I am over 60 and we all know what that means.


In a perfect world - I would have HALY- she would be my main storage where everything is sent to for archival storage and retrieval when needed.
-Then I would have a monster fast Computer drive that would allow me to operate my day to day editing, downloads , uploads.
-Then moving forward I could figure a way to drive all the older equipment with state of art computing that is easily replacable ( try finding software for a Fuji Frontier scanner and have it installed} not fun.
-All my software would come from above and I would pay a reasonable fee for my collective usage of PS , Illustrator ect.

I may be screwing up my own thread with the nonsense above but if I could find this perfect world where I do not have to worry about my workflow slowing down it would be priceless.

[Greg Miller]

Light Guru.. you scare me with your question... because I cannot answer your question Mirrored to what?

No need to be scared. Light Guru was using "mirrored" in a literal sense. You were using it in a generic sense. Drobo has their own proprietary system (patterned after RAID) that provides data redundancy across multiple drive - a single drive failure will not cause you to lose data. Mirroring, in a technical sense, is a specific type of redundancy where 2 (or more) drives have an exact same copy of the data. That isn't how RAID or Drobo's system work. But they are providing data redundancy by having the same data exist on multiple drives, which is what I believe you were try to convey. You do not technically have mirroring on a Drobo, but you do have data redundancy to protect against a drive failure.

[Light Guru]

No need to be scared. Light Guru was using "mirrored" in a literal sense. You were using it in a generic sense. Drobo has their own proprietary system (patterned after RAID) that provides data redundancy across multiple drive - a single drive failure will not cause you to lose data. Mirroring, in a technical sense, is a specific type of redundancy where 2 (or more) drives have an exact same copy of the data. That isn't how RAID or Drobo's system work. But they are providing data redundancy by having the same data exist on multiple drives, which is what I believe you were try to convey. You do not technically have mirroring on a Drobo, but you do have data redundancy to protect against a drive failure.

I'm betting you are right and the OP is just using the wrong terminology.

The OP also seems to have ignored the other questions that I and others have asked.

How full is the drive? I and at least one other person have asked this and the OP has commented several times on the thread and NOT answered it. We ask the question because drive performance can be linked to hoe full it is (especially when using devices like the Drobo)

Open the Drobo dashboard, select your Drobo and tell us what it says for capacity and for space used.

Also how is the Drobo connected to your computer. I ask because Some connection types are slower then others.

Also what model Drobo do you have?

We cannot help you unless you answer the questions we ask.

[polyglot]

If this data is valuable, you must also consider (off-site) backups, even if they're refreshed only once every month or so. If the drobo breaks or eats its data or you accidentally delete a file or the box is stolen, what next? Having a stack of HDDs sitting in a cupboard a couple of suburbs away is something everyone should seriously think about. Doubly so if your income depends on that data!

Mirroring and redundancy within a device is absolutely no replacement for real backups that are physically separated from anything that might go wrong with your primary copy.

[bob carnie]

Light Guru

I did answer this , I am having someone look into this and report back to answer some of the questions asked.
One of the drives has failed and we are replacing that right now.

I will try to answer some of your questions. It is a five drive unit Drobo . I believe a Drobo 5D
It is connected through a Netgear Pro Safe 24 port global switch
Each computer is cabled to this switch
As I was working the bottom line told me I had 13.5tb available
I believe (need geek) that the Drobo has two main folders... Archive .... Production....
I have been lately dragging Alias from Drobo and working on files and saving back into Drobo
Before that I was working off a separate Lacie Drive via Alias and then saving into the Archive on Drobo files finished.

Bob

I'm betting you are right and the OP is just using the wrong terminology.

The OP also seems to have ignored the other questions that I and others have asked.

How full is the drive? I and at least one other person have asked this and the OP has commented several times on the thread and NOT answered it. We ask the question because drive performance can be linked to hoe full it is (especially when using devices like the Drobo)

Open the Drobo dashboard, select your Drobo and tell us what it says for capacity and for space used.

Also how is the Drobo connected to your computer. I ask because Some connection types are slower then others.

Also what model Drobo do you have?

We cannot help you unless you answer the questions we ask.

[Greg Miller]

Light Guru

I did answer this , I am having someone look into this and report back to answer some of the questions asked.
One of the drives has failed and we are replacing that right now.

I will try to answer some of your questions. It is a five drive unit Drobo . I believe a Drobo 5D
It is connected through a Netgear Pro Safe 24 port global switch
Each computer is cabled to this switch
As I was working the bottom line told me I had 13.5tb available
I believe (need geek) that the Drobo has two main folders... Archive .... Production....
I have been lately dragging Alias from Drobo and working on files and saving back into Drobo
Before that I was working off a separate Lacie Drive via Alias and then saving into the Archive on Drobo files finished.

Bob

Just looking at your numbers and making some assumptions, my guess is that you have five 3 TB drives. That mean no redundancy. You should definitely get that checked. You really want raid, or drobo flavor of raid if the data is important at all. Also as i mentioned before, it is handy to partition the array into 2tb or 3tb chunks so that it is easy to backup each partition to a 2tb or 3tb USB drive (taking some off site to protect against fire, theft, water,...).