Ok, so I've made some computer decisions that I've been complaining about for months (sorry about that).
First things first, I'm going to stick with Vista x64 instead of moving my desktop to OS X. I've never had Vista crash on me, and it can actually use the 8GB of RAM I've got installed, as well as the fact that 64 bit Photoshop is Windows only for a while and I've come to really like CS4.
I've also decided to not replace my desktop, but rather upgrade it instead. Next week, Intel's new i7 processors will be available, along with the new motherboards and DDR3 memory that goes with them. I've been eyeing and waiting for them for a while, but you know what? My Core 2 Quad 6600 is pretty darn fast, and as I've said, I've already got 8GB of RAM, so why replace all of that for not that big of a speed boost for what I do? In fact, I think the only thing I ever wait for the CPU in Photoshop is the lens blur filter on the rare occasion I use it. Most of the time I wait to save my 500MB layered 16bit PSD files. Which brings me to the changes.
Currently I've got 5 hard drives in my machine. 1 old 74GB Raptor as a boot drive, 1 500GB RAID 1 array for random documents and downloads, and another 1TB RAID 1 array for photography. That's a grand total of about 1.6TB of space on the built in Intel RAID controller on the motherboard, and I'm running very low, easily down to below 20% space remaining on all of them. Hard drives slow down as the fill up, so this storage situation is my big problem.
Therefore here's what I've done. This morning I ordered a new case, 2 more 1TB drives, and a new bigger power supply. When they arrive (part tomorrow, part Friday or Monday) I'm going to transplant my current system into the new, larger, fancier case (more on that in a moment), add the new drives as an additional photo array and my current collection across the two. So I should end up with 2 photo arrays which are about 40% full. I figure that at my current rate of consumption, this should easily last me a year. And since hard drive space keeps doubling, I can just upgrade to bigger faster drives next Christmas for the same price. That said, the files from my 1Ds3 are twice the size of those from my 5D, so we'll see how well my math holds.
Initially I was thinking of keeping the storage in a separate enclosure and connecting them to the machine via eSATA, but the high end enclosures cost about $500 empty, so I figured I'd be better off just getting a bigger case and doing 7 drives internally. This giant Lian-Li case was the answer. Looks about perfect for my usage.
When I finally get paid for the UBS job I did a few months ago, I think I'm going to get myself a little extra treat in the form of an Intel SSD to use as a boot drive. $600 yes, only 80GB yes, but those who have taken the plunge have said that it's done more to make their computers 'feel' fast, than any other upgrade they've ever done. Yum.
First things first, I'm going to stick with Vista x64 instead of moving my desktop to OS X. I've never had Vista crash on me, and it can actually use the 8GB of RAM I've got installed, as well as the fact that 64 bit Photoshop is Windows only for a while and I've come to really like CS4.
I've also decided to not replace my desktop, but rather upgrade it instead. Next week, Intel's new i7 processors will be available, along with the new motherboards and DDR3 memory that goes with them. I've been eyeing and waiting for them for a while, but you know what? My Core 2 Quad 6600 is pretty darn fast, and as I've said, I've already got 8GB of RAM, so why replace all of that for not that big of a speed boost for what I do? In fact, I think the only thing I ever wait for the CPU in Photoshop is the lens blur filter on the rare occasion I use it. Most of the time I wait to save my 500MB layered 16bit PSD files. Which brings me to the changes.
Currently I've got 5 hard drives in my machine. 1 old 74GB Raptor as a boot drive, 1 500GB RAID 1 array for random documents and downloads, and another 1TB RAID 1 array for photography. That's a grand total of about 1.6TB of space on the built in Intel RAID controller on the motherboard, and I'm running very low, easily down to below 20% space remaining on all of them. Hard drives slow down as the fill up, so this storage situation is my big problem.
Therefore here's what I've done. This morning I ordered a new case, 2 more 1TB drives, and a new bigger power supply. When they arrive (part tomorrow, part Friday or Monday) I'm going to transplant my current system into the new, larger, fancier case (more on that in a moment), add the new drives as an additional photo array and my current collection across the two. So I should end up with 2 photo arrays which are about 40% full. I figure that at my current rate of consumption, this should easily last me a year. And since hard drive space keeps doubling, I can just upgrade to bigger faster drives next Christmas for the same price. That said, the files from my 1Ds3 are twice the size of those from my 5D, so we'll see how well my math holds.
Initially I was thinking of keeping the storage in a separate enclosure and connecting them to the machine via eSATA, but the high end enclosures cost about $500 empty, so I figured I'd be better off just getting a bigger case and doing 7 drives internally. This giant Lian-Li case was the answer. Looks about perfect for my usage.
When I finally get paid for the UBS job I did a few months ago, I think I'm going to get myself a little extra treat in the form of an Intel SSD to use as a boot drive. $600 yes, only 80GB yes, but those who have taken the plunge have said that it's done more to make their computers 'feel' fast, than any other upgrade they've ever done. Yum.
I follow your blog closely and have learnt a lot from it, thanks.
One thing you don't mention is off-site backups.
Make sure get some right angle cables for all those hard drives... when I moved up to SATA drives in my production machine, I didn't account for how the drives were mounted (similar to the Lian Li you ordered).
Hard drives don't slow down as they fill up. Why would they - the data doesn't weigh anything. The file system might get a tiny bit slower, but I bet you wouldn't recognize that. If you want a really, really fast harddrive, get an Intel Flash drive, as Linus recommends.
Hi Mark-
Yes hard drives effectively slow down as they fill up. The controllers on hard drives are tuned to use the outer parts of the disc first where the heads pass over much more surface area per revolution. Plus as they fill they become fragmented and even if you defrag, it's more likely that the drive has to split up the file across the dress because there is not as much contiguous space available. See this graph:
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/Content/Pages/Products/Benchmarks/HdTachScreenshot.jpg
Almost half the transfer rate gone towards the end of the drive.
And yes, I'm looking at the Intel SSD as a boot drive, but it's really expensive and not nearly big enough to store my images. Plus sequential transfers (like saving one big 500MB file) are not the place that SSD really show their advantage.. random requests, hell ya. yum.
Ah, so you get worse performance for files you store when the disk is full. Yes, that makes sense. Sure, if you mainly need sequential performance then hard drives are probably the best bet, but for OS and applications (and swap, if you need it) the SSD is the way to go. Too bad the good ones are still so expensive.
Oh btw: Great photography! Have been following your work since about mid 2007.