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U
UncleGrandma
Participant
January 25, 2026
Question

Scratch Disk Issue That Has Been Haunting Me For Years

  • January 25, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 70 views

So, to start; here are my specs:

 

Current version of Photoshop

Windows 11
64GB DDR4 RAM at 2666mhz

Intel i7 9700K

EVGA 2070 Super

And the important pieces:

A Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2tb with 1.3tb of open space (this is the drive photoshop is installed to)

A backup SATA SSD 500gb with full space open

I also have other backup drives, but they don't have the speeds needed for scratching.

 

For the better part of 2 years I cannot get my allocated scratch disk space above 41.6gb.

I just recently wiped every Adobe program and temp files to do a fresh install of the Creative Cloud and all apps that I use. This didn't fix anything.

 

When messing with performance, like increasing RAM percentage, Cache Levels, reducing History States; nothing changes.

 

When telling Photoshop to just use my 500gb SATA SSD, it still only uses 41.6gb.

 

I'm very lost with this, so I'm really hoping someone can finally help me figure this out. 

1 reply

Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 26, 2026

Cool username, albeit a confusing one.

 

I'm not thinking of any way to control the maximum Scratch space in Photoshop.  Are you thinking on the Video apps?  Sorry to ask, but are you definitely not talking about RAM?  Even if that was the case, you should be about to allocate 90% of your 60GB.

 

Without knowing the exact model of your SSD, this is a guess, but you might be better off using the boot drive for Scratch space.  An average SSD/SATA drive might manage 500MB/s continuous write, while your 970 EVO is about six times as fast.  

If you close Photoshop, any Photoshop Temp files left can be safely deleted.

    U
    UncleGrandmaAuthor
    Participant
    January 26, 2026

    Hey Trevor,

    Yeah the username is supposed to be goofy, I'm glad someone recognized it.

     

    The exact model of my NVMe M.2 Drive is a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2tb, and it has about 1.5tb available. 

    The backup SATA SSD is a Seagate BarraCuda 120 with 500GB.

     

    What you're saying is not the issue though. Even if I allocate 90% of my RAM my default scratch space barely changes. 

    This gets me up to 43.9GB

     

    Everything I have read has indicated I should have so much more space available

      D Fosse
      Community Expert
      D FosseCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      January 26, 2026

       

      For the better part of 2 years I cannot get my allocated scratch disk space above 41.6gb.


      By @Michael30097765e4gg

       

      Where do you see that? The scratch file grows as you work and as needed. It's not all allocated immediately. In other words, as you describe it, this sounds perfectly normal.

       

      The scratch file is divided into 16 GB chunks. If you have the scratch disk on your system drive, it's in your system TEMP directory:

       

      sysTEMP.png

       

      Do not increase RAM allocation! That will only choke the whole system. RAM allocation is unrelated to this. Depending on how much RAM you have, 60-75% is about optimal.

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