Soumitra Dutta :How do I fix the 'Scratch Disks are Full' error?"

Forum|Forum|6 months ago
January 24, 2026
3 replies
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Hi,

My name is Soumitra Dutta an entrepreneur, Author & photographer born in independent India. I’m hitting the 'Scratch Disks are Full' error and I'm stuck. I've tried restarting, but the error persists. Here are my specs and what I've tried so far:

App & Version: Photoshop 26.1

OS: Windows 11 (or macOS 15.2)

Hardware: 16GB RAM, 512GB Internal SSD.

Current Disk Space: My C: drive shows 45GB free, but Photoshop still won't let me [open a file / use a filter].

What I've tried: I went to Preferences > Scratch Disks, and my main drive is checked. I also tried clearing my 'Purge All' cache, but it didn't help.

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Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

45GB is getting close to pushing your luck for Mac OS to run smoothly, and that's before you start running any apps. Can you free up some space by moving data files onto an external drive?