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A
Anonymous
December 8, 2019
Answered

Windows 10: Could not initialize Photoshop because the scratch disks are full.

  • December 8, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 1512 views

I've seen lots of other posts on these forums (and elsewhere on the web) about this problem, but none of the suggestions on those threads have worked for me.

 

I'm trying to install Photoshop 7.0 on a new computer.  I had no problem installing it on my previous computer, and they're both Windows 10, so I don't know what the problem is.  I have over a TB of free space on my hard drive and 64 GB of ram, so the idea that I'm out of scratch space is ridiculous.

 

Here are some of the many things I've tried which haven't worked:

  • Using Ctrl+Alt to manually select the scratch disk on startup.
  • Running as an administrator.
  • Turning off UAC (Windows User Account Control).
  • Using "subst" on the Windows command-line to create a new virtual drive pointing to normal folder.
  • Explicitly setting up the folder permissions so that all users have full access to the folder.

 

No matter what I try, I still get the same error.  I'm completely out of ideas.  Does anyone know how to fix this?

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Mylenium

There is nothing to fix. Legacy programs like PS 7 cannot deal with any drives larger than 512 GB. They simply do not have the necessary math built in. Unless you care to reformat your drives and make sure each and every partition is below this critical limit this will never work. That and of course it could still not work due to specific requirements and driver dependencies e.g. on SSDs to emulate legacy file operations.

 

Mylenium

2 replies

Mylenium
MyleniumCorrect answer
Legend
December 8, 2019

There is nothing to fix. Legacy programs like PS 7 cannot deal with any drives larger than 512 GB. They simply do not have the necessary math built in. Unless you care to reformat your drives and make sure each and every partition is below this critical limit this will never work. That and of course it could still not work due to specific requirements and driver dependencies e.g. on SSDs to emulate legacy file operations.

 

Mylenium

A
Anonymous
December 15, 2019

Thanks!  This answered my question!  I was able to follow some online instructions to create a virdual drive with fixed space (I used 4 GB), then used Ctrl+Alt to make Photoshop use that virtual drive as its scratch disk, and it worked!

R
René Svendsen
Participant
March 9, 2020

Hi

Worked here as well.

Photoshop 7 In Win10:
Problem with Photoshop 7 on a disc > 1 TB
Go to Discmanager and create a virtual Hard drive on your 2 TB or larger C: disc, I created one with 1 GB space, got the name E:
Start Photoshop with CTRL ALT
Change scratch disk to E:
Best regards René

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
December 8, 2019

It wasn’t designed to work with so much free space. Get up to date. 

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