Photoshop scratch - SSD or Velociraptor RAID?

[rphoto]

I'm a photographer and I've been making digital montages of 500+ layer files for years now (file sizes ranging from 2GB to 35GB on average). I've gotten used to waiting for the computer to crunch the numbers whenever I make a change over the last few years, but I recently decided to replace a failed notebook with a Hackintosh tower to try and speed up my process.

 

Here's my current build:

 

Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5

Intel Core i7-930 Bloomfield 2.8GHz

ZALMAN CNPS9900ALED 120mm CPU Cooler

Corsair XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3

EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM (Main install)

Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB 5400 RPM (Backup install + multimedia storage)

 

I've been running my Hackintosh build for a couple months now and love it. I use it mostly for Photoshop work on CS4 (can't wait for CS5!!). I was under budgetary constraints when I started the build, but I've managed to save enough to get myself a dedicated scratch disc or two. My Photoshop scratch size can get up to 90GB pretty quickly even with conservative caching and history settings, so I think a 128GB solution should work fine.

 

Here's the thing, I've been reading VERY mixed suggestions online as far as SSDs vs. Velociraptors for Photoshop scratch. SSDs are kings of random reads, but the newer ones show improvement in sustained read/write operations. Velociraptor RAIDs still kill it when writing and reading large files (after spin-up), but is that how Photoshop accesses the scratch info? Anyone know if I should go with something like a Corsair P128 CMFSSD-128GBG2D over two Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS drives in RAID 0?

[WeD@]

Here are some hard drive benchmarks:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/hard-drives,3.html

 

I'm not sure about Corsair P128, but Toshiba HG2 43nm 256GB cleans floor with raptor

 

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1230/13/

 

If you need maximum random access (or large number of i/o operations) go with ssd,

If you need maximum read / write Throughput then you should think about something like this:

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/10tb-hdd-raid,2344.html

[rphoto]

Unfortunately my budget is around $400 for now. I know that throughput is important for writing/reading the Photoshop scratch file, but Adobe's language is vague regarding RAIDed HDs vs. SSDs.

 

from http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404440.html#scratch:

Fast RAID 0 arrays are the best option for scratch disks, especially if the array is used exclusively for your scratch disk, is defragmented regularly, and is not your boot volume...

Since they mention defragmenting regularly, and we know that that's terrible for SSDs, should I assume they are talking about standard HDs?

 

Adding RAM is more cost effective than purchasing a solid-state disk (SSD). If money were no object, you added all the RAM you could in your computer, you ran Photoshop CS5 as a 64-bit application, and the efficiency indicator still ran at 90% or less, using a solid-state disk as your scratch disk would significantly improve your performance.

Since money is a factor, and I can't afford a massive RAID array or 128GB of RAM, should I take from this Adobe information that a SSD RAID 0 array would be the most efficient method of improving my Photoshop performance? If that is the case, should I buy a $400 ~128GB SSD now, and plan on buying it a mate in a couple of months to make it a RAID 0? Or should I just buy two 128GB raptors and save up for more RAM in the future (although I'll never be able to afford 128GB of it)?

 

EDIT (P.S.):

For instance, the OCZ Vertex Turbo for around $375:

OCZ boasts an average sustained write of 120MB/s while Tom's Hardware's benchmarks rate it with an average write throughput of 219.1 MB/s (well over the Samsung Spinpoint at 115.30 MB/s or WD VelociRaptor at 103.21 MB/s).

 

Would this be a better investment than buying 3 Spinpoint F3's for around $250 (I only have 3 empty SATA II ports unless I unplug my DVD player or find a fix for the other set of 4 SATA ports I was told I had to disable to get my Kakewalk install working) and setting them up RAID 0?