Posted by Jay Martin on September 18, 2006 at 8:16 PM
I need one badly! My computer is sooooo.....slowww. Any recommendations would be great - I need a place to start.
Thanks.
Posted by Rob Coomer on September 19, 2006 at 9:53 AM
I just bought a Western Digial 500GB MyBook, and have been very happy with it. They have been pretty agressive with price on them at Best Buy and other locations. I have 4 other Western Digital externals.
Posted by Justin on September 19, 2006 at 12:53 PM
Jay,
You may find THIS THREAD of interest from over in the UKNP forum.
Based on the above recommendation I bought a 250GB version and am very happy with it.
Hoping to buy another couple in the near future,also.
Posted by Mel Ladewig on September 19, 2006 at 1:46 PM
Basicall Western Digital seems to be making people happy with reliable external drives.
As an alternative, I'd post a couple other things for you to think about.
1) make sure your computer's ram is high enough. You see better performance if you have at least 1GB to run this photo software. 2GB is great.
2) Think about a second internal drive. You can install a second drive in your computer cheaper than any external drive of the same size would be. Internal drives are usually faster than external ones.
3) Think about a Network Attached Storage device as an alternative to a USB external drive. NAS drives can be made available to multiple computers simultaneously and can be much larger. Buffalo and Infrant are major manufacturers.
Posted by Don Miller on September 19, 2006 at 6:42 PM
Not sure how a new drive is going to speed up your computer. Are we talking about using it for photoshop swap files?
Posted by Mel Ladewig on September 21, 2006 at 12:42 PM
As I mentioned, the first item that will help speed things up would be the RAM. Having the correct amount for your application will keep you from needing to use virtual memory too often. Other than this, you'd need to get different processors and hard drives to get any other speed increases, which are pretty big steps.
A second internal drive can help out in a couple of ways.
First, the computer should be a little quicker it you only have the OS and executeables on the main drive, and have defragmented that drive. Seek times for files should be reduced. Like you mentioned, you can also use the second (data) drive for your virtual memory and PS swap, which can help the speed as well. That way the first HD can still read while the other HD is writing to virtual memory. In addition, an internal drive has a faster I/O rate than an external USB2 drive which I'd assume is the type of drive Jay was asking about. I don't think that it would be feasable to put PS swap files of virtual memory on a USB2 external drive.
Posted by Jay Martin on September 21, 2006 at 7:27 PM
Thanks for the recommendations everyone. A second internal drive and a boost in RAM sounds like it may be a good idea and as far as the external drive (storage) idea, western digital products look really good.
Discussion
6 repliesThanks.
You may find THIS THREAD of interest from over in the UKNP forum.
Based on the above recommendation I bought a 250GB version and am very happy with it.
Hoping to buy another couple in the near future,also.
As an alternative, I'd post a couple other things for you to think about.
1) make sure your computer's ram is high enough. You see better performance if you have at least 1GB to run this photo software. 2GB is great.
2) Think about a second internal drive. You can install a second drive in your computer cheaper than any external drive of the same size would be. Internal drives are usually faster than external ones.
3) Think about a Network Attached Storage device as an alternative to a USB external drive. NAS drives can be made available to multiple computers simultaneously and can be much larger. Buffalo and Infrant are major manufacturers.
A second internal drive can help out in a couple of ways.
First, the computer should be a little quicker it you only have the OS and executeables on the main drive, and have defragmented that drive. Seek times for files should be reduced. Like you mentioned, you can also use the second (data) drive for your virtual memory and PS swap, which can help the speed as well. That way the first HD can still read while the other HD is writing to virtual memory. In addition, an internal drive has a faster I/O rate than an external USB2 drive which I'd assume is the type of drive Jay was asking about. I don't think that it would be feasable to put PS swap files of virtual memory on a USB2 external drive.