[Rinaldo]

sounds like an awesome setup :) give us full specs to drool over!

raid 0 is flakey from my exp. if it breaks apart, you lose your stuff for good, and if you have your system on there it can get complicated.
it may just have been the cheap onboard raid that came with my MB (it's not that bad tho) but you might have problems booting and reconfiguring stuff if you don't know a bit about setting everything up from scratch. it shouldn't be a problem cos you don't have any sensitive data on the raid. but anway, I will never put my system on a raid array ever again.
[edit, I just read that ur not putting the system in the array now, doh]
I don't know how you have it set up. but it might be worth not having the system on the raid controler even. this is just for booting problems and such if the raid dies. it might make the turnaround for getting everything up and running again shorter.
I got no idea how much of a tech head you are with pcs either. if you know enough to build everything and set up the raid from scratch/troubleshoot it, then you won't have the same problems as me.:)

how does it run painter btw? can you get nice smooth brush movement on 4000+ px files with a few layers?
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Dailyscribble

[spooge demon]

well this sucks...

from adobe itself...

"Photoshop supports a maximum file size of 2 GB and a maximum dimension of 30,000x30,000 pixels per image. In addition, Photoshop can run only on computers with 2 GB or less of installed physical RAM. "

rinaldo, the specs

Dell Precision Workstation 650 Mini-Tower: Intel� Xeon? Processor, 2.8GHz, 512K Cache, 533MHz Front Side Bus
Additional Processor: Intel� Xeon, 2.8GHz/512K Cache, 533MHz Front Side Bus
4GB DDR266MHz NON-ECC SDRAM (4 DIMMs)
9.2 Ghz 1.44 MB Diskette Drive w/RAID 5
36 GB SCSI Hard Drive (10K RPM)
36 GB SCSI Hard Drive (10K RPM)
36 GB SCSI Hard Drive (10K RPM)
36 GB SCSI Hard Drive (10K RPM)
nVidia Quadro4 900XGL, 128MB VGA
Microsoft� Windows� XP Professional
48X CD-RW Drive
Software
Software
Shipping Material
Logitech PS2, 2-Button (grey)
Entry Level Keyboard
Miscellaneous
Hard Drive Bracket

Painter really depends on the kinda brush you are using and that feature setting. All I can really say is that painter is now usable in a semi professional manner, whereas on the mac it was a toy.

I don't plan on trusting the RAID for 5 minutes. All will be BU'ed daily. And the system is on a stand alone drive (could not stripe that one cause it was running things, so much the better)

moo, thanks for the link, Itried the hacks, nothing doing. System reports 3.37 GB available, and photoshop thinks the machine has 2 GB, which is consistent with Adobes statements above.

bang, my monitors situation has more to do with physical factors and one monitor is weaker, etc, than switching. I will get to it soon.

pat, there is a powertool for remapping the alt, cntrl and caps keys. Cool, but they don't work, at least for me:(

Had a BSOD due to firewire drivers from maxtor. stay away.

[Evernus]

Hi Craig,
try to to fill up 3.37Gb with something. As far as I know braking the 3.37 limit will make 4Gb available to the system(with the crack)

Can you describe your monitor problem? Maybe I can help...

[B0b]

[dr . bang]

You scared me now, i'm using Fujitsu because of its dead silence noise, and i've never heard bad things about it.

You mean IBM Deathstar?
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[ceenda]

2 x 120Gb fujitsu drives here too.

[B0b]

fujitsu IDE drives are known as the drives of death in the IT sector -

soon after the 1yr warranty they have a v high falure rate! - i myself had to change a clients HDD because the guy who put it together used a fujitsu drive in a mission critical PC and just after the 1yr was up it went pop.. lucky for them they backed up on a regular basis..

certain IBM drives have been known to also fail - but fujitsu are by far the worst..

IDE drive manufacturers i would reccommend are:

Western Digital
Maxtor
Seagate

found a little snippet from a site where a report from a guy who works for a UK government agency "Subsequently, due to the failure rate of the Fujitsu hard drives in them, they have just undergone a huge replacement operation, with around 2500 hard drives being replaced nationwide"

[Tomasis]

forget about samsung, fujitsu, IBM as Bob said

I'm runing on Seagata and Maxtor hdds now =) Then I will buy WD Raptor 2x
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[balistic]

What's funny about anecdotal reports of hard disk reliability is that Maxtor makes IBM's drive components.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[dr . bang]

HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH i just realized that i'm using a Seagate Barracuda IV, i've mistaken it for Fujitsu!!!!! WOOHOOOO!

Ceenda, you're on your own now
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[B0b]

ROFL n1 bang

seriously tho' if u have a compaq desktop PC , check out the Compaq website they've some important information about Fujitsu drives in their products..

[Yuri]

Well, dang, Fujitsu sucks ass. I can only suggest that you try to extend your warranty before it expires to ensure that if your hard disks go pop, you can yell at the people to get down and replace it.
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[Loki]

Dude - you got a Dell ...


I just pulled my machine back into the contemporary realm too.

I'm using Serial-ATA drives in a RAID. Quite fast and CHEAP!!!

Still needing to be acquired is a QuadroFX beast ...

Seems like a good machine, Craig.

Make sure that you have your Windows page file is on the RAID - but not the same partition as your PS scratch file ...
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[silber]

could someone tell me why to set up an extra partition for scratchdisk?
I put my scratchdisk on a partition where I store my files and stuff.
->will that slow down my scratchdisk?
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marek

[B0b]

if u put ur scratch on the same partition where u store files - as ur creating files - and deleting files ur hard drive will become fragmented = less performance as the heads on the hard drive will have to move over more of the disk surface and also seak the next part of the data

Q: so if u put ur scratch on a fragmented drive what happens?
A: u get poor performance on ur scratch file..

the same reason why u should have a fixed pagefile size not a range ie: 1024 min 1024 max - not 512 - 1024 (this is because if its a fixed size it never moves on the partition)

[silber]

thanks Bob.
I will follow your advice but
I have another question if you don't mind:

My virtual memory (pagefile) is set to 1536-4095 .
1536 is the 1.5 size of my RAM
and 4095 is the maximum windows allows me to assign.

Microsoft says that one should set the initialize pagefile to 1.5 size of RAM.
Further they tell one should have only one pagefile on one physical Harddisk.

Now if I assign 1536-1536 as you recommended
I won't have much vitual RAM, would I?
(I have two Harddisks, raid to one,
so I think that counts as one physical harddisk)
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Anny suggestions?
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marek

[B0b]

i have mine set to 2048 (2Gb same as my RAM) i find with that much RAM i don't really find the need for more..

[BadMange]

That's a pretty sweet system you listed there, Spooge. I'm especially jealous of your "shipping material." Sweet...

Sorry if this was mentioned before, but you'll get even better performance by using a seperate drive for your scratch disk. I don't mean a partition, but a physically seperate harddrive. Don't waste a whole SCSI drive, but pick up one of the Western Digital 8MB cache IDE drives or even a 10,000 RPM drive. There was a thread on Sijun awhile back about this, search for "scratch disk".

That's a serious piece of kit ya got there, spooge! Noice!

-Bad Mange
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[spooge demon]

update:

transfered a drive from old PC to new. Machine became unbootable, had to reinstall OS. Corrupted registry BAD_SYSTEM_INFO

I will hold off installing any more drives for now, but I will have to eventually.

Yes, having more than 2GB RAM in a pointless excercise in macho. I won't go into it.

I have to right click to bring up the brushes palette in PS. That is tough with the pen, you have to use the switch on the pen itself, very uncomfortable.

With two monitors, with primary on the left, if the cursor is on the right half of the screen the brush palette comes up on monitor #2.

I have pried off the windows key and buried it in the garden.

[PhatTexta]

hhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaahahahhah @ windows key
ahahhahahha

[Sukhoi]

Yeah, the windows key. pffft. I have mine blocked with a paperclip. But Spooge, right clicking to get to the brushes is nice IMHO, I guess it's a habit thing which gets me to my point: Don't do anything hasty like smash your mouse for having two buttons , wait untill you have fully adjusted before you take action where appropriate.
I believe there are a LOT of habit issues when transitioning from Mac to PC. (DUH).......

Sukhoi

[Lunatique]

Ok, I'm getting somewhat confused here with all the talk of scratch disk, page files, seperate drives...etc.

So, basically, you:

1)Keep a seperate HDD just for scratch disk used by apps like Photoshop--or, at least create an exclusive partition for it on another HDD apart from your OS.

2)Keep page files on an exclusive partition for each of your HDD, so they don't get fragmented.

So, ideally, you should have your OS/apps on one HDD(or a RAID chain), keep your scratch disk on another HDD(and if there's other stuff on it, keep them in seperate partitions), everything else on other drive(s), and then make exclusive partitions for each of your HDD's?

[B0b]

i have my pagefile on my system C:/ just have it @ a set size of 2Gb

[zaar]

With all the hardware geeks gathered in one thread, I might as well take the opportunity and ask about partitioning drives.

At work I've just gotten a new machine with two 180 GB drives. The tech dude who started building and installing it before I took over had made a 20 gig partition for the OS and stuff. But what should I do about the rest to get the best performance?

I've heard some say that one shouldn't make any partitions larger than 20/30 gigs (something like that) or it will decrease performance. But does that only apply to FAT systems? I'll be using NTFS.

[B0b]

i have a 99Gb NTFS partition no performance degridation for me


2x180gb in RAID 0 or just 2 seperate drives?

[zaar]

It was intended to be a raid 0. But it turns out that the motherboard (asus P4PE) only supports raid with serial ATA (which the drives are not). I would have checked that if I was involved in the process earlier . So I guess I'll just have to live with having 360 Gigabytes instead of 180 with better performance...

BTW, thanks B0b!

[glody]

haha dell must love you craig.....very sick configuration.

lookin forward to seeing the results of all that computer love.

[cheney]

[B0b]

[Ragnarok]

About the Ctrl key, well you'll get used to it. I "mastered" it's use playing Doom, because I was constantly hitting the Mayus key and using the Ctrl key to shoot.
Also, when I've used a Mac I couldn't get used to the command key. To me it's pretty clumsy, but that's because I don't use it often.

Oh, and I learned to avoid the windows key playing games too, there's nothing worse than be in the middle of a fire fight and hitting that key. The game crashes, etc.
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