Processing and storing images

“Funnily enough the most common question I’m asked constantly is...What computer should I buy?”

The debate between “Apple Mac” and “PC” is an argument I’m not going to be drawn into , both have their attributes and pitfalls, it really comes down to one’s personal taste...Bourbon or Whiskey, BMW or Audi, both will get the job done.

Before you choose your computer hardware, work out what software and peripherals you’ll be using first, there’s still some  current equipment out there that has questionable 64bit driver support but excellent 32bit support or It could be compatibility with Mac that could give you trouble. Do your homework thoroughly.

The biggest deciding factor is always 'The Budget'. The difference between a £300 machine and a £5000 monster is speed and storage, at the end of the day if snow Leopard*, XP or windows 7 will run on a given machine you’ll be able to process images............Albeit at different speeds, the more you spend the faster you can process those images and the bigger your storage capacity will be.

Software is becoming more and more CPU*/GPU* dependent every day, photo-editing software is no exception with some programs( HDR)taking several minutes to process a single image on a machine that was cutting edge not 4 or 5 years ago.

CPU=Central processing unit

GPU=Graphics processing unit

Snow Leopard =Latest Apple Mac Operating System

How Can I Improve What I have already?

The best bang for buck upgrade you can effect is adding more Memory to your system. If you’re running 32bit OS* and presently have 1 or 2 GB* of memory....double it. Unfortunately your system will only be able to utilize about 3.5GB of it, but you will notice a difference definitely, especially with larger files.

If you’re running the newer 64bit OS* there is no memory limit to what the software will support (upper cap is in the Terabytes) if you can fit in 6,8,12gig cost permitting ,do it.

•  Regularly defrag your hard drive/s, once a month is fine
•  Occasionally defrag your registry..........faster boot times
•  Keep you drivers current
• Keep your software and apps current
• Reduce the number of programs running in the background but better still turn them off if you don’t need them running

*OS= Operating System

Advanced system improvements

Most larger laptops have a second hard drive bay you might not know about which could be empty or utilized for archive storage, all towers will defiantly have a HDD bay free, 500 GB Hard drives for a laptop (2.5” internal) can be picked up on flea-bay for under £50 and 3.5” internal ones a little cheaper. So how do you implement that extra storage...you could use it purely for storage...or increase performance by using it as a dedicated scratch disc for Photoshop, big improvement under 32bit systems, not so important for 64 bit , memory modules are much faster or maybe partition off half of it to set up paging file for the operating system,(See system virtual memory config) this will reduce the load/overhead on your main C: drive and use the other half for scratch or archive

If you go into BIOS most high end systems will have a “Optimized settings” available, if you choose yes go back and check all boxes after the first boot as this will have changed/optimized most settings in BIOS, the main reason where doing this is to change the memory timings to an optimal setting that the manufacturer feels it will run at safely, when making large changes like this can and will hold quite significant optimization improvements to the overall system performance as long as its stable. To check this, download MemTest86+ which is a highly regarded free app that can be put on floppy or memory stick, system can then boot directly off it bypassing any and all operating systems to thoroughly test memory modules and stability of the optimized setup...Totally safe people. Tip! Run it over night.

 Solid state hard drives or SSDs hold good potential for improvement in read/write speed but realistically only the higher end models hold any real world improvements and be warned, they are expensive. The main improvements are found in seek timings going from say 10 milli-second seek timings to 0.4 or better....very fast!

Raid is Coming

Just as dual or quad core processors increase performance, so does multiple hard drives. RAID was invented for photo-shoppers; the improvements in performance can be huge and proportional to the number of drives used.... if done properly and safely. For all uses, adding extra hard drive/s can add extra storage or parity at the very least or even utilize a series of drives in a virtual single disc space. Raid5 is probable the safest balance of performance/safety configuration offering good fault tolerance (can lose one hard drive through hardware failure and still be safe) as a quick example 5 x 500 GB Sata2 hard drives under Raid5 will give you...................

1) Fault tolerance of one hard drive, ie single hard drive fails, system is still bootable but degraded/slower, pop in a new drive (Yes! hot swappable) and the system will rebuild itself automatically, better yet a hot spar can be in place for just such an event waiting in the back ground...all fully automatic recovery with notification

2) Read speeds 4 times higher than a single hard drive......6 discs, 5 X read, 8 discs, 7 X read

3) Write speeds same as a single drive...the only trade off

4) Storage capacity a bit under 2.0 Terabytes all under :C drive...very handy!

For best performance make sure all the drives are matched in capacity, brand and model if possible. Another little thing to look out for in all Raid builds is how the drives are configured out of the box, all hard drive manufactures have free diagnostic software available specifically designed for their hardware, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate all have them, again usually a boot disc to get around the OS system

I recently had a really annoying problem with my system being a little slow with intermittent freezes lasting 2 or 3 seconds at a time....turned out to be one of the discs in the Raid array was set to “silent” in acoustic management settings, all drives in a given Raid array will only run as fast as the slowest drive, all drives racing ahead then stopping to wait for the straggler to catch up..............Again free downloads and useful if you think a hard drive is flunky or about to fail.

 Tip! Check all your drives acoustic settings, It could be set to Silent, medium, fast and off....can mean up to 15% performance gain, over 6 discs can mean an extra 70 to 80 Mb/s.......= one extra drive of performance

S.M.A.R.T, Again in BIOS, especially if you’re running raid leave it active, small firmware app manufactures implemented to runs in the background constantly monitoring your drive/s for imminent or pre-mature drive failure, quite a few programs use this data feed to report the condition of your system, Yes it truly does work.

Raid0 is extremely attractive with read and write speeds virtually the same and very popular with gamers, but fraught with danger for the novas, one bad boot, one system crash, gray out or blackout ...everything is gone, operating system, programs and files, all gone!

 UPDATE! If you’re really dead keen on trying the blistering read and write speed performance that raid 0 has on offer this is the only way I know how to do it with some degree of parity and safety but do so at your own risk, this is actually my own present configuration

Intel has a very handy chipset series which supports Matrix raid, updated recently to RST or Rapid Storage Technology........it will support raid 0, 1, 5 and 10 from memory (Intel ICH9R Raid Controller is the one I’m quoting) the real gem with this fella is it will allow you to have say raid 5 and raid 0 as well running on the same array (set of hard drives) one solution is you have your operating system, programs and storage on the raid 5 side to give you the parity you need and photoshop work space , scratch and page file set on the raid 0 side to utilize the raw performance.  Note: For some reason Raid 5 loves odd numbers, 3 drives 5, 7 where raid 0 is totally unbiased.

Power Supply

Another thing to think about is...........when you loose the power with your laptop plugged in............big deal!, It’s got a battery so no problem right!...........But what about the beast sitting under your desk.UPS (Uninterruptible power supplies) are becoming more and more common and popular, the advantages are obvious, brown outs, blackouts and constant clean power. Mine even texts me when there’s been an event but most importantly gives me those critical 5 or 10 minutes to finish/save my work in an outage and can even be configured to shut down if Im not there.

            Which leads me to the most important part of this article and that’s how good is your back-up. What? You Don’t Have One?!

Backup, backup, backup

The question we are really asking is “what price do you put on your data??? I’m actually a little lazy in this department and paid dearly for it in the past..never again ever will I be put through that, a very strange sick feeling in your stomach when it really hits home that 2 years of data and files is really gone with no hope of recovery. 

I now use Acronis True Image Home 2011 because it’s made for lazy people..with a 1 terabyte external USB drive permanently connected to my PC and a little configuring, I can set and forget, incremental or differential backup, full clone/image that I can do a total restore in the event of a total catastrophic failure and I mean everything, operating system including all updates, programs even active imbedded serial numbers will all be intact in fact once reloaded nothing will be different what so ever.

I can even reload it on to another machine if I want too (With the “Plus Pack” update) even IDE or RAID hardware changes. Lost individual files...backup can be mounted or vice versa and accessed...hell I can even boot from it, now that’s impressive.

 I think that’s enough to ponder on for a week or two and I hope you got something out of it, If one person learnt something today that’s me, reminds me I need to practice and implement what I know more.

Aussie Allan