Scratch disks? Ram? Hard drive full?

Question

I am pretty clueless when it comes to all of these listed things, which is why I really need some help. I have about 25 GB of hard disk space available on my computer at any given time, but when I open up Photoshop, it seems to eat up 20 GB of "space" (I'm not even sure if I'm using the right word here) and then everything is crashing and I have to attempt to quit PS to get my computer to calm down again. I read somewhere that some people set up a separate scratch disk just for photoshop because this is a common occurance, but I have no idea what a scratch disk is or how to set it up or even if this is the right solution for my problem. So... looking for some resources here, if anyone can help. Thanks!

D Fosse · Answer

20 GB free disk space is not nearly enough for normal Photoshop operation. You will keep bumping into this problem unless you clear out some more space on your drive (or get a bigger one).

You should ideally have at least ten times that, more if you work with big files.

Image editing requires huge amounts of memory, much more than any RAM you may have installed. All that data has to go somewhere, so it's written to disk as you work (and deleted when Photoshop exits). This is the Photoshop scratch disk.

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