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erickeee
erickeee
Known Participant
July 18, 2025
Question

scratch disk full error, but a lot of space...

  • July 18, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 287 views

Hello everyone,

I don’t understand how the available space on the scratch disk works in Photoshop.
Sometimes, when I try to open a file, I get a scratch disk full error, and I can’t open my file.

When I check Photoshop’s settings, I see that the scratch disk has 185 GB of free space, but when I look in the Finder, I have 1.2 TB free.

Two questions:

  • How can such a big difference be explained?

  • And why aren’t the 185 GB shown in Photoshop enough to open my small 13 GB file?

Does anyone know how this works?


Thanks 😉


Eric.

2 replies

S
Stokes_Jimmy8150
Participant
July 18, 2025

Photoshop often needs 3–5x your file size in scratch space, especially for large or layered files. The 185 GB shown is just what's allocated, not your full disk space. Try clearing temp files or adding another scratch disk in Preferences.

Sameer K
Community Manager
Sameer KCommunity Manager
Community Manager
July 18, 2025

Hey, @erickeee. Welcome to the Photoshop Community. We'll need more information to help you figure this out. Please share the system information from Photoshop Help > System info > Copy and paste into a text document > upload and attach here. 

 

Does this happen with a specific document? Where is the document stored? A 13GB PSB isn't just a small document; it can grow relatively large on scratch space. 

 

Let me know how it goes. Thanks!
Sameer K

(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

erickeee
erickeeeAuthor
Known Participant
July 18, 2025

Hi @Sameer K ,

here is the attached file.
It does'nt happen with a specific file, can ben anyone.
(unfortunately 13GO for me is small for my work)

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 18, 2025

The scratch file contains all history states for all open documents, plus some overhead. Each history state potentially adds the full uncompressed file size.

 

Wit 13 GB files you can see this quickly blows up.

 

In addition, many of the newer AI-based functions use the system pagefile for temp storage. This goes on top of the scratch disk.

 

Reduce history states down to 2-5 if you can't add more disk space. This will dramatically reduce the scratch size.

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