15 - [Inner] The Ward of Erahum [Mouse]

[Straf]

I think it's the Task Manager that allows you to see how much memory is currently being used and how much is available, although I'm not certain as it's been a while since I used Windows. Depending on how many applications you have open at once, you could have your bare minimum open (without GIMP) and see how much memory is available. That will give you an idea of how much you can give GIMP.

To change that you go Edit > Preferences then in the Environment bit there's a bit where you can set resources consumption. I probably wouldn't set it more than 75% of available RAM from above, unless that would make it less than it currently uses. So if it was 2GB available then I'd look at setting it to 1.5GB tops. It's useful to keep some memory free for system tasks and that. At least that's what I believe anyway. I could well be talking nonsense though as my perception of these things could be well out of date. I just know that Windows tended to be quite resource hungry when it came to background housekeeping tasks. Oh and it had a habit of using the swap file regardless of how much free RAM there was.

[Mouse]

Thanks Straf

I'll have a look at that in the morning when I'm more awake.

[johnvanvliet]

microsoft is known for the " for your convenience.....we will do this ... and not tell you "

things like Internet explorer and MS office can AUTO load into ram on boot ( for your convenience to start the program faster ? maybe )
or the top 10 programs you use could auto be started and put into ram on boot ( or more likely from Hibernate - the NEW shut down

80% of your ram might be auto pre allocated

depending on the version of windows there are some very handy hacks
like the ADMIN tools folder in Win7 ( it is HIDDEN from you )
on 7 make a new folder with this name

.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

ALL the gui tools and system settings all in ONE!!!! place

EDIT , correction!!! renamed the hack to the correct name
the dot and everything
and will work in Win10

[Mouse]

Thanks John

Unfortunately I have Win 10.

[Rongar]

Straf is correct about reserving enough system memory. Allocating too much RAM to GIMP will slow down your entire system, including GIMP. So it would basically be a lose-lose-scenario. I once read about using approximately 1/4 of memory to GIMP to be on the safe side, but that was ages ago. I'm currently using 2/3 (so 2 GB of my whopping 3 GB) and it seems to be alright. But then again, I'm on Linux and I don't use that many applications at once. If I were you, I'd start with using 2 of your 4 GB for GIMP and see how it goes.

[johnvanvliet]

it works also in 10
i typed in the wrong name , it is now corrected

just make a folder on your desktop with that name on your desktop
you will need to have admin access and need that password

[Falconius]

If that external HD is the only copy of the writing you did, perhaps you should back that up to something else? Or print it? Or put it into Dropbox? Seems risky to me.

[Redrobes]

I have a docking station where you plug in raw hard drives (no lead, not USB etc). It was very cheap but now I can use loads of old hard drives as backups. If you have valuable data on one hard drive you are running the gauntlet. You have to compare how much you value that data with the cost of a new hard drive. Definitely back that stuff up ! I have about 5 hard drives or so with important data on it like photos etc and I spread them about and not keep them all in one place. I have an external USB hard drive on my shelf which I use about once per week where I just plug it into the USB and hit a script widget and it backs up all my important dirs. You can get web space like drop box to use, or google drive or whatever. Just zip up everything you want to store, then encrypt it then upload it.

As for the USB stick, yes its flash based so no moving parts / you can spill coffee on it etc. Also they are tiny so you can keep it permenantly plugged in and it wont hinder the laptop at all. By moving the swap file on to it the most common form of slow down from using large images are then moved to a flash based drive.

I dont think you will need to change the split for RAM from system to graphics card. That sort of thing is useful for 3D gaming etc where you have a lot of textures and need to transfer them about. The system sometimes makes a copy of the texture before sending it up to the card. Gimp and most desktop apps wont use the graphcis card to do a lot of work. Blender would be an exception tho. Dont know about CC3+. I know my app was written especially so that it did make a lot of use of the graphics card which is why it went fast but it was unusual in that respect.

So my advice is make a priority of getting a backup of that data and try to keep it on a drive that is not part of your PC - an external USB is easiest but you can use a pen drive or something else. Maybe buy a USB pen drive which is a bit bigger than you might need and keep a copy of the most crucial stuff on it as well. I have lost valuable data in the past. I used to have several HDDs in my PC at the same time and back up from one to the other. One day the PSU blew up, smoke came out of it and everything was fried. All of the HDDs and the motherboard, the whole 9 yards was lost. Never again.

I couldn't comment about Win10 doing odd things with your memory. I have given up on Windows now. Its just too much hassle. Whilst the UI experience is sometimes better than linux, just about everything else, especially system stuff, is so much of a pain I cant stand it any longer.

[Falconius]

I have lost valuable data in the past. I used to have several HDDs in my PC at the same time and back up from one to the other. One day the PSU blew up, smoke came out of it and everything was fried. All of the HDDs and the motherboard, the whole 9 yards was lost. Never again.

Ergh... I can't decide I I wanted to hear that or not...

How did the PSU blow up and how did it fry the HHD's? Did it surge the power to them when it fried? That sounds expensive.

[Mouse]

LOL! I've never had the money to have more than one functioning PC before now, and something similar happened to my last desktop. The cooling fan failed when I was sleeping through an 18 hour render of a Blender animation scene. I too had smoke, and nearly set the flat on fire!

Anyway... back to the map...

I'm still working out the exact technique to use. I was working on the map in GIMP last night and once I got to grips with this mask idea it occurred to me that I could do this like a painting in textures - making use of the fact that the GIMP map is a bitmap rather than a CC3 vector drawing and actually have flat plates of all the textures I'm going to use stacked up and invisible, then simply paint everything into existence like I would with oils on a canvas.

Now I just need to work out what order to stack the texture plates in to make this relatively easy, and render the textures from their existing sheets in CC3 (to keep all the scale and HSL adjustments I've made in CC3)

EDIT: As for the current situation with data storage, I might reconsider the suspicious regard with which I view all Cloud arrangements, since that would be the most permanent way of protecting it (even if its not the most secure)

John - thanks for that advice. I will see about putting it into action later today