Configuration recommendations for new computer

[Ryderscope]

I've bitten the bullet and am now the proud owner of a new system. I found processing mosaics just too much of a challenge for my five year old lap top. The basic specs for the new system are; i7, 32GB RAM, 250GB SSD, 2TB HDD, Asus graphics card, AOC 27" monitor. I have the SSD set up as drive C:\ and the 2TB HDD set up as drive D:\.

I haven't installed PI on the new machine as yet. My question is to ask what specific configuration options should I set to take account of my new hardware? I presume, for example, that I would load PI on to the SSD. Are there any other options that I should set in the system preferences?

Thanks in advance,
Rodney.

[Niall Saunders]

Hi Rodney,

It can be advantageous to put all your 'Windows System', Program Files, etc. onto a C\: drive (on an SSD, or even - motherboard dependent - one of the 'M2' drives). Then, you can move your 'My Documents', etc. onto a second SSD drive (watch the drive size - put all your data on one drive means an exponential feeling of sadness when it all packs up. You can then use a third drive (your HDD in this case) to archive data from your My Documents drive.

Onviously, you still then need some form of totally reliable backup strategy to duplicate your data further - preferably off-site. I personally backup to five locations. I have two 1TB SSD drives (E\: and F\ internal to the machine taking backups from the C\: and D\: drives. I then have three dual-2TB NAS drives, configured in RAID1, also taking the same backups as the E\: and F\: drives. One is in the garage, one is in the observatory and the third is in a fire-proof box under the stairs. I have a fourth NAS ready to be pressed into service as soon as, or if I ever, get a decent broadband connection.

All of my data transfer speeds are just as fast as they can be, and not one single bit of data is 'in the cloud' and thus not freely available to whichever national spying service wants to try and decipher my Dark Frame images 

As far as PixInsight itself is concerned, I have this installed on both the observatory (reasonable-spec) PC as well as the (ultra-high-spec) PC that I use as a daily number-cruncher. I also have TeamViewer installed on all of my machines so that I can perform all the remote comtrol that I am ever likely to need.

[Ryderscope]

Thanks Niall. That’s an impressive array of storage that you have.

I’m currently running two x 4TB NAS servers for data storage for my imaging data. A routine runs every morning to back up from one to the other. One server is in my office in the garage and one inside the house. I tend not to keep data on my machine but now I have a local 2TB drive I may reconfigure this and backup to one or both of the NASs.

More specifically though I have perused the PI system requirements page and this post here:

https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=7644.0

There is reference to setting up parallel swap files etc. so I was wondering if there are any other recommendations specifically as they pertain to the PI application preferences.

Thanks again.

[RickS]

Hi Rodney,

Where you put the PI application won't make much difference to performance apart from initial start up speed.  Putting the PI swap on SSD is the most important thing to do.  When you modify images the backup copies are written to swap and this generates a lot of disk I/O activity.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Ryderscope]

Excellent. Thanks Rick.