Sandbox performance

[badlydrawnboy]

Dave,

Don't know if you can answer this question but thought I'd give it a shot anyways. I've got a G5 tower with a 74 GB Raptor in sandbox configuration and a 400 GB "original drive". I used the "shared users" script to set-up the sandbox - not for safety/isolation concerns, but because I thought I read somewhere that editing digital images in Photoshop (something I do frequently) is faster when the image files are stored on a different drive than the one PS is running on.

However, I also know that the more free space that is available on a boot drive, the faster it will be. So if I rebuilt my sandbox with "shared users & applications", there would be much more space on the drive. (Right now it's about 40% full, with all of my apps on it).

I'm just wondering if you can provide any insight here on how the sandbox configuration affects performance.

Thanks.

[dnanian]

Yeah, they're likely referring to the difference between the data drive and the "swap" drive (for virtual memory). The Sandbox would keep those two things separate, and might help performance. Worth trying...

[badlydrawnboy]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your reply. Just to clarify my (lack of) understanding of how the sandbox works... is it set-up so that the Library, System and Applications (if I choose "Shared Users and Applications") are all active/running on the Sandbox drive, while the user directory is on the original drive?

Of course there is still the complete OS X install on the original drive, but OS X is not running on that drive when booted from the sandbox - correct? It is essentially acting as a storage drive for the home directory.

Thanks,
Chris

[dnanian]

That's right: it stores the Home folder and preserves the other information, so your OS is left as-is.