Mac Slowing to a Crawl when using Photoshop, and Illustrator

[91mustang]

Hello All,

we have been having problems in our design studio.

We have 3 G4's, and 2 G5's

All have 2gb of ram.

The G4's have OS-X (2) and Panther. they also have illustrator 10 and Photoshop 7.
We work with very large files...400mb+

The G4's can sometime take up to 15 min to save files, and sometimes crash.

The G5's have they have Photoshop CS, and Illustrator CS.
I noticed that not all users have same verison of OX-X
Apparently there is also issues when sharing files between the G4's and G5's.

It seems that CS and other versions are not compatible. My users have problems make changes to files between the 2 versions.

What software would you suggest in terms of os-x and other mentioned applications?

What combinations have people used and had success with similiar hardware and file file sizes?

 

[ApplejustWorks]

my suggestion, would be to first get all the computers running the same version of OS X. Then, also get all the computers to be running the software. I know this may be the rather expensive way out of the problem, but this is the only solution that is NOT a workaround. This makes it TRULY compatible.

 

[immdb]

Since you work with very large files, it sounds like your systems need to be optimized. Even though OS X does some optimization it isn't enough for your environment. I've noticed major speed improvement after optimizing my OS X volume. So, to speed up your saves optimize your OS X volume using a utility like Drive 10.


To keep your system running smoother and longer, this is what I would do…

Partition your system into 2 volumes. Put OS X on one and all of your data files on another.
Since OS X does some optimization it wouldn't have to be optimized nearly as often. The "data" volume could be optimized weekly/monthly (depending on activity) to keep data access speed at its best.

Good luck.

 

[Shakermaker]

What about adding another hard drive as a scratch disk? This may save some time as well, would it not?