Photoshop freezing at 99% when saving file.

What has surprised me most in all this - and we've had several posts a day for months now - is how many people save directly to external drives without thinking twice about it. To me that has always been a strict no-no, not because anyone ever told me so, but purely because it always seemed like a very risky thing to do. There's a multitude of reasons an external drive is less reliable than a hard-wired internal one.

Size matters here. A Photoshop file is generally big. There's a lot of data to pass through, and with the extremely slow read/write rates of external disks, the transfer is vulnerable for a very long time. A lot of wait cycles pass while the external drive is busy.

If failure happens at every x GBs on average, the larger the file, the more likely it is that any one single file will be hit. That's statistics. That's why Photoshop files seem to be more vulnerable to corruption than other, smaller files.

Looking around the internet, it seems exFAT has a few problems of reliability and sturdiness. It's prone to failure and corruption. The problem is that it's the only file system that works cross-platform. If you're on Mac only you would use APFS, if you're on Windows only you would use NTFS. That solves the whole problem.

There's no getting around the fact that mostly Mac users (Catalina specifically) have problems with exFAT drives, although a few Windows users have chimed in too. The most likely explanation is that Catalina introduced added security that exaggerates the issue. One surprising piece of advice that turns up frequently on the net, is to do the actual formatting on a Windows computer, not a Mac. That supposedly works much better on Mac too.

For now the best thing to do is avoid exFAT if possible - and avoid saving directly to external drives. There shouldn't be any reason to do that. Save locally, then copy the file over.

Format external drive to APFS and it's fixed. 

For those using external drives - here is a pretty complete background and possible solutions offered for the Catalina read-only bug.

https://iboysoft.com/ntfs-for-mac/how-to-solve-external-hard-drive-read-only-mac-without-formatting.html 

Listen my dear friend, you won't find any solution here for this problem. I've had the same issue and never gotten help from some losers call themselves "Adobe Community Professional"!! 

Problem

• The problem with Photoshop CC 2019/2020 with all recent "updates". 
• You will lose your files and even more worse your orginal files will be damaged.

Solution:

• Download photoshop cc 2018 or older! untill Adobe fix this mess! 

Regards

Also havig this issue. Still no fix?

Hi Everyone,

I have been having a similar issue after having updated to PS 2020. But I have a possible work around for your problems. 
I am on an iMac Pro running the latest version of CatalinaOS saving into a 4TB Samsung SSD via USBc to USBc cable.
Someone in this thread mentioned that when the writing speeds of photoshop do not match the writing speed of your external hard disk or network server, PS can get hung up and stop. That seems to have been the case for me. I would save a file and it would freeze at a random percent and then I would have to restart the whole system to get PS running again. Very frustrating. 

My thought was, maybe my HD was too fast for PS. So I switched my cable to a USBc to USBb cable. I am now able to save without a problem. 

I understand not all Macs have USBb slots so this is not a quick fix for some, especially if you are on a macbook pro or something. My suggestion would then be to get an adapter that will slow the signal down so the writing speeds match up better.

For people having issues over networks, I apologize for not having a solution for you. 

I hope this helps at least a few people.

Best of luck,

Geoff

I am still running Mojave, not Catalina, and am using my regular internal Mac SSD. Macbook Pro 2017. Same problem. Force quit is required so no error prompt. Full disk access good to go, I added it, still same issue. This issue only began after updating Photoshop to the latest version.

Having the same problem running PS in Catalina on a 2015 MB. Files are usually hosted on a Samsung T5 ssd, but it happens when I work off the local drive, too. Seems like using smart objects or even just adding a simple blemish removal layer to the background will set it off. Super annoying to lose time-intensive work. 

Have you confirmed that you have allowed Photoshop permission to access your HD (to save)?

Go to Apple System Pref/Security&Privacy/Privacy and make sure Adobe Photoshop is in the list and checked.

Hi everyone, 

We are really sorry about the inconvenience the crash issue must be causing your. However for it to be fixed this is what each of you will need to do:

Send a crash report to the product team at Adobe.

In the crash report give detailed description of what you have been doing leading up to the crash. Do not make any assumption. Outline step by step what you have been doing leading up to the crash.

In your description you need to include the exact version number, and built number the bug happens in. Saying it is the latest version is not adequate because you might not have the latest version.

To find the version number and bill number go to the "About screen".

Include your system specifications include - exact video card and driver number, and also none obvious hardware, or software info..

Attach a photo or screenshot, test media, and video of the bug happening. A video is super helpful since it will record all the steps leading up to the bug. The video can be recorded using a cellular phone.

For live scree capturing on Mac the Quicktime utility is useful. On windows the cel'phone video will work fine.

If the utility pops up enter the relevant info including your e-mail address and submit it. The e-mail address may be useful for gathering further relevant information from you. 

You may share the media info (video, photos) with the product team using a dropbox account, Google cloud account, or creative cloud account. And of course if a utility pop-up did not occur, an e-mail will work well.

I hope your found this helpful

Best wishes

JG