During editing of an image does Photoshop periodically access the disk where the image came from?

[Bill Junk]

I have a large external HDD where I keep all my photo images.  In the Photoshop (Beta) settings I've set the scratch disk to a different drive, one that is an internal SSD.  What I've noticed is that as I am editing an image after opening it from the HDD there is periodic activity on the HDD that I suspect is being done by Photoshop.  No other applications use the HDD.  The activity on the HDD seemes to be in response to some editing action I've taken.  Then it seems that about every 5 minutes or so there is HDD activity and the user interface of Photoshop stops responding for about 10 to 15 seconds.  I'd appreciate an explanation of this behavior and maybe a way to get around it.  Thanks in advance to anyone / everyone who wants to reply.  I'm running on Windows 11 with all updates installed.

[Glenn 8675309]

Check your scratch disk settings in your preference file.

[Bill Junk]

In my Phososhop preferences my scratch disk is set to E: which is an internal SSD.  My photo image files are stored on J: which is a large external HDD.

[D Fosse]

It's probably just small refreshers to prevent the disk from spinning down. You can set disk shutdown times in Windows Settings.

There's no reason Photoshop should access the disk once the image is loaded in memory/scratch disk.

[Bill Junk]

I found where I could set the delay time before drive power off and changed it to 5 minutes.  My Photoshop apps are stored on my E: drive (SSD).  When I execute Photoshop it does cause accesses to my J: drive (external HDD)  before I've selected an image file to edit.  The J: does have an Adobe folder but the only subfolder that has data is one used by Photoshop Elements Organizer to store the catalog files.  I'm leaning toward CCleaner 7 as a possible culprit.  It was not listed as a start up app but despite that it somehow was running three processes.  I've changed some settings in CCleaner to stop it from automatically updating which stoped it from restarting.  After I post this reply I will reboot and see if it somehow is still able to start itself.

[jane-e]

In the Photoshop (Beta) settings

Photoshop Elements Organizer to store the catalog files. 

By @Bill Junk

Can you confirm if you are using Photoshop, Photoshop Beta, or Photoshop Elements? You mentioned all three, so it is not clear.

Jane

[Bill Junk]

I'm using Photoshop Beta most of the time.  I use the Photoshop Elements Organizer for my cataloging but it is not a factor in the what prompted my question.  Once in awhile I use production release of Photoshop.  My question is based on exerience with PS Beta.

[Bill Junk · Accepted solution]

The issue seems to have gone away.  Maybe thee was something fixed in one of the PS updates.

[Bill Junk]

Actually I thought the issue had gone away but it came back (or never went away).  Anyone willing to give an answer explaining what is going on?