P: How to fix Photoshop Scratch Disks Full Error?

[samarthsrivastav]

I am running Photoshop CC on my MacBook Air with macOS Sierra. Every time I attempt to open Photoshop through any means, the following message appears: "Could not initialize Photoshop because the scratch disks are full", and Photoshop does not open. I tried clearing space from my Mac in general including several GB worth of apps and removing several cache files, but nothing seems to work. I also tried holding down the command and option keys to reveal the Scratch Disk Preferences, and it lets me select the Startup and MacIntosh HD. Again, nothing worked. Anyone know how to fix this message, and/or clear scratch disk space?

{Moderator note: Edited the thread title PS-65057}

[Trevor.Dennis]

A terrible idea.  What is the fastest SD card available?  100Mb/s with the wind behind it, and providing you have a really good card reader.  I am sure that reading and writing to scratch files is a serious bottleneck, and it gets worse if you use a lot of Smart objects.  If you really need to use an external drive for scratch space, look at a USB3 drive that comes with its own power supply, like the Seagate Expansion.  They are good for 180Mb/s.

But let's take a step back.  Have you really run out of space, or is there another problem? 

Solve Adobe Photoshop problems and issues by keeping it up-to-date

How much free space does the primary Scratch drive have?

Look for orphaned Photoshop temp files in the root of that drive.  If it does not have today's date, delete it.  Or close Photoshop, and if any are left, delete them.

If you just have the one drive, then you might be able to free up a bunch of space.  If it was a Windows system, I'd suggest WinDirStat to see what is clogging the drive, but there is a Mac equivalent.   You'll need Gene or another Mac expert to suggest what can go, but the best plan is to relocate some things to a second drive.  Your

Disk Inventory X

Whoops..  Just read your post again and I see you are using a Surface Pro.  I have to go cook our tea right now, but'll post gain later if no one else has sorted you out.

[Trevor.Dennis]

OK, so you are using Windows, and I imagine Windows 10?

Download an install WinDirStat, and check your boot drive.

https://windirstat.net/

It will produce something like this, and you need to look for the big chunks of data, like the huge blue rectangle in the middle of my screen shot.

If I click on that blue rectangle it tells me it is Windows hibernation which is 25Gb on my system, and something you don't need. So disabling it would immediately win me 25Gb of space and it's a PITA anyway.  The only reason I have not disabled so far on this system is that I have a 500Gb boot drive, but I have noticed that I can't wake Photoshop from Hibernate, so will be getting rid soon.

There are lots of opportunities to reduce space on a Windows 10 boot drive, and a ton of links telling you how:

https://www.windowscentral.com/best-7-ways-free-hard-drive-space-windows-10

How to Reclaim Hard Drive Space by 'Shrinking' Windows 10

While it is a terrible idea to use your SD card as Scratch space, there is no reason not to 'mount' it as a normal drive, and move some of the non-critical data to it.  If you are not, please feel free to run it buy us, but things like old picture files and other documents, downloads etc.  I don't actually know if you can hot swap an SD card when it is mounted, but if you can, then it would be a great way to do your backups.

Mount SD Card as Permanent Storage or Local Drive in Windows 10 – EaseUS

Good luck.

[D Fosse]

Yes, WinDirStat will quickly become essential - keep the link handy everyone! There will be a rush of these coming!

All those first-generation 120/240 GB SSD machines are now starting to hit the wall. It worked for a while, but now the user account folder has accumulated enough junk to fill the system drive up completely. A lot of users will be at 80% or 90% by now.

After running Windows Disk Cleanup, the only sensible thing to do is to clean out the user account. Look for caches and preview folders. This is where WinDirStat is indispensable - those big folders stick out and you see them right away.

As an emergency first step - delete all Bridge Previews, going back all previous versions you have had installed. Redirect the previews folder to somewhere else in Preferences. If you have Premiere Pro and After Effects, they are other big offenders. Do the same there.

[Astri Numinis]

Hi, guys! I just wanted to thank everyone for your answers! I got a bit busy so this is long over due. I used WinDirStat and cleared up some space and and moved some stuff over to my SD card.

[fourharmony]

Hi, thanks in advance for reading my post. So I recently decided to get a 126GB external hard drive because I wanted Adobe Photoshop and my Internal hard drive currently only hass like 6GB worth of free storage (I know that's pitiful). I'm going to get an SD card eventually, but right now this is what I'm working with. The only problem is my external hard drive is not showing up in my Scratch Disk, all I see is my internal hard drive with 6GB.I can't really do anything with 6GB because as I'm sure you all know, photoshop likes room to spread it's wings. I'm slowly starting to lose my mind and I really would appreciate some help, I'm unfortunately not very tech savvy. I'm using a PC, I HP Stream laptop 14 to be exact. And I just have a SanDisk drive, nothing fancy. Again, thanks so much.

[gener7]

While this is Mac centric, the idea is the same. Be sure the external drive is formatted as NTFS and and checked on in Preferences > Scratch disks.

Cannot change my scratch disk to external HD - Photoshop CC 2015.5

[fourharmony]

My external hard drive is formatted as NTFS, and there is nothing to check in my scratch disks because they don't even show up. The only thing I see in scratch disk is my internal C: drive.

[gener7]

Try the holding down  the Alt + Ctrl keys on Ps startup. Is your scratch drive an option in the drop down menu?

[fourharmony]

Right, I've done that and I still only see my C: drive as an option.

[gener7]

Assuming your drive shows up in Windows, then something's not right with Photoshop. Can you go to Help > System Info and get the exact version of Ps?

At this point, I would recommend a Preferences reset, but also make sure your Photoshop is updated.

[LynxJynx0101]

I have the same issue, when I ctrl+ alt start photoshop I cannot see my D: drive, only my C: drive ssd, it's like photoshop doesn't even recognise the existance of my 2nd drive... 

[Mohit Goyal]

Hi there,

Are you on Mac or Windows platform? Do you see the drive in the Finder/File Explorer on your machine?

Thanks,

Mohit

[PAWU]

@Mohit Goyal : "C:" and "ctrl+alt start" looks heavily like Windows jargon...

[Jeremiah5D58]

Hi, 

I've been having the same issue as well. I'm on Mac and I gave 2TB of space on my hard drive but Photoshop is still  saying that my disk is full. Should I just delete files from my hard drive? 

Thanks

[Lumigraphics]

You could try ExFAT instead of NTFS and see if that works. NTFS is better for hard drives but ExFAT is supported.

Understand that you have a VERY low-end laptop that will not run Photoshop very well. Instead of struggling with this system, my advice is to find a recent used computer that has better specs.

[gener7]

I would second trying ExFAT.

[fourharmony]

How would I go about doing a preference reset when I can't even open Photoshop due to the low disk space? I also tried switching to ExFAT and it still didn't work, unless I have to restart my computer.

[Lumigraphics]

You may not be able to run Photoshop on that computer at all. Even if you get it running, it will probably be so slow as to be useless.

[fourharmony]

You're probably 100% right. Well that's too bad, can you recommend any good laptops or tablets that wouldn't cause me to pull my hair out like hp does?

[Lumigraphics]

Its not so much HP as just having a cheap, low-spec netbook.

I'd look for a computer with (bare minimum spec): i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, 128GB SSD and a decent 13" display. You can probably find something a few years old, used with those specs for $3-400. More money will buy a faster processor, better video card, more RAM, more storage, bigger screen, etc.

[强王59649157]

As for the hard drive not showing up in Windows, you can try the following methods.

1.  check whether the connection cable or port is in a good condition. If the data cable or connection port is damaged, then the BIOS cannot detect the cables and sometimes even disturb their connection. So please ensure the cable is connected to the port tightly. Or you can plug the flash drive to your computer through another different port and cable to test their conditions.

2. If the flash drive is not enabled in System Setup (BIOS), then it won’t show up in Disk Management and Device Manager. Since some unused ports are disabled in the BIOS in default by the motherboards producers, you might found the connected hard drive not appearing in Windows. In such case, you can enter BIOS to check their current states and enable them if necessary.

3.Update the driver:

Right-click on Start, click Device Manager.

Expand Disk driver and locate the hard drive which cannot be detected by Windows.

Right-click on the disk and select "Update Driver Software" from context menu.

Select Search automatically for updated driver software.

4.Check and fix bad sectors on the second disk

Press the Windows key to open the Start Menu

Select Search

Type-in cmd

Right-click on Command Prompt from the search results listcmd

Click Run as administrator

Log in as an Administrator

When Command Prompt launches, type the command:

chkdsk C: /f /r /x

[valentinevar]

I've been getting the error that the scratch disks are full. My PC has two internal hard drives and one of them is fairly small. I'm interested in using the D drive, which is where I basically have all my software installed, etc. The first time I used photoshop, both the disks showed up and I was able to choose my D drive. I haven't formatted or anything since then. The D drive is working fine.

Then, I got the error again and now the D drive isn't showing up at all after loading photoshop.

That said, it still shows up when I open the scratch disk selection on the loading screen using Ctrl+Alt

And it is (and has been) the chosen scratch disk (as you can see, even when going to the preferences in PS, the C drive isn't ticked). The D drive has 283 GB of empty space so it should be more than enough. Both disks are formatted to NTFS (seems I read somewhere PS doesn't like NTFS but wouldn't that not show me either disk?)

Any help would be appreciated.

[Sahil.Chawla]

Hi Valentinevar,

Sorry to hear about the scratch disk not showing the other drive, could you please let us know the exact version of Photoshop & operating system you're working on?

Also, could you try the steps mentioned here and let us know if it helps? Second internal hard drive not visible as scratch disk option. Photoshop CC, OS X

Regards,
Sahil

[valentinevar]

here's the system stats that pulls from PS

Adobe Photoshop Version: 19.1.6 20180808.r.398 2018/08/08: 1185588  x64

Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit

Version: 10 or greater 10.0.17134.1

Running the program as administrator makes both the disks show up. I followed the steps on that thread you linked but I'm not sure anything changed because if I don't run the program as administrator the disk still doesn't show up. What would I do if I continue to get the scratch disk are full error at this point? because it only makes me think that Disk D has been the selected disk this whole time and I've still been getting the error.

[JJMack]

If you use Windows what does windows disk managment show ?