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}

[Josselyn5C73]

I'm trying to use an external drive specifically for my scratch disks for Adobe Photoshop, but whenever I open the preferences to select my flash drive it doesnt show up. I've quit, logged out of, and even uninstalled photoshop and reinstalled it after my external drive connected to my computer but I still can't get it to show up as an option. Am I doing something wrong?

[curtisk40606096]

Hey there, I recently renewed my photography plan but I cannot seem to open photoshop.

Upon launching the application I am greeted with this message.

I would change the scratch disks to my e: drive, which has 2 terabytes available, but I am not able to click on anything.

This goes for basically everything on my computer, I am getting messages saying that my c: drive is full, which it is, but I cannot figure out how to change/move things to my e: drive.

Any help is appreciated.

[Test Screen Name]

You generally can’t move any system files or apps. You can COPY your own files and delete the original. Whether this helps depends on what your C drive is full of. You need to examine what is using the space, in detail. You could waste time moving thousands of small files for no gain.

[D Fosse]

First of all, run Windows Disk Cleanup. If necessary run several passes, progressively checking more options.

Most of the remaining junk tends to accumulate under your user account. This is where you can really free up space.

Just to start somewhere random, look at you Bridge cache. It can easily grow to tens of gigabytes - and note that previous versions' caches do not get deleted when you uninstall! There are lots of these.

There is an excellent free utility called WinDirStat (google it). Armed with this, you can really clean house. This is a screenshot from my own system - the outlined area is my user account. Expand the folder and you can chase the files down to the last dusty corner:

The big red blobs to the right are hibernation and pagefile. You can disable hibernation and reclaim all that space - I don't remember how, but I'm sure someone else does.

[defaulto1b3v31dyvgk]

Hello Guys!

Please help me (picture attached), I have read the related article but have not had any success in fixing this issue, some instructions are way over my head 🙂

I use the new MacBook Air and the latest Photoshop, anyone got advice for me?

Many Thanks

 

[Test Screen Name]

To start with, how much free space do you have on your system disk? Many computers are sold with disks too small for Photoshop. Let us know if you're not sure how to find out.

[Kalerian]

Hi,

I have cleared my scratch disks with WinDirStat and it worked, but when I open a certain .PSB file, it goes back to the issue of scratch disks being full. 

For reference, I have about 20 GB of free space, and the file is about 1GB, but when I try to open it, my free space goes to just 6GB, and it won't open due to the scratch disk issue. 

I feel that it has something to do with the file. Any pointers would be much appreciated. 

[D Fosse]

It has indeed something to do with the file: it's big.

20 GB is not nearly enough. I'm sorry, but you really need at least ten times that to be reasonably safe. Personally I would never work with anything less than 500GB free space, but preferably more.

There is no way around this. It's not a "bug" or a fault in Photoshop - it's that raster image editing moves huge amounts of data around, and it has to go somewhere.

[bekzclz11]

If you're getting an error message that the scratch disk is full, it usually means you need to clear some space on whatever drive is defined as the scratch disk in Photoshop Preferences, or add additional drives for Photoshop to use as scratch space.

[tomosp66665623]

Hello

I am having trouble with the Scratch disk on my Mac. I can't render my work on photoshop as there is no space left on my scratch disk. Any recommendations on how i can fix this?

Thank you

Tom

[Akash Sharma]

Hi Tom,

If you have a different partition on your Primary drive with some space left or have a different drive connected to your computer, You could change the scratch disk to a different drive from "Scratch disk preferences". Take a look at the solution in this discussion Scratch disk full and cannot open photoshop to fix it...  and let us know if that helps.

Thanks,

Akash

[Jesper Storm Bache]

Make sure that you updated to Photoshop 2017.1.1. (released today).

This update includes a fix for a scratch space issue.

Jesper

[JJMack]

It is good that bug has been fixed it would be even better if other reported bugs were also fixed.   So users like me can get off of CC 2014.  Adobe feedback site states that work is in progress for I bug I reported.  Its been in Progress in CC 2015.5  in CC 2017 and is still in progress I guess in CC 2017.1.1 progress seems to be stalled IMO.  I have reported other bugs that have been in Photoshop forever and will most likely remain in Photoshop till its life-cycle end.  IMO Bugs will eventually kill Photoshop but without competition that will not be within my life time. Its Photoshop till the end of me....

[Chris24581605id4g]

basically this is the perfect con to drive people onto adobe cloud... photoshop cs4 was faster in everyway... youre going backwards adobe, expect users to jump ship as soon as they can!

[Abambo]

basically this is the perfect con to drive people onto adobe cloud... photoshop cs4 was faster in everyway... youre going backwards adobe, expect users to jump ship as soon as they can!

By Chris24581605id4g

Photoshop 4 (not CS4) was even faster… but the possibilities and features were as well less.

FYI: I even did word processing and database programming on machines having ram of 64kb (not Mb or Gb as I have now). I had one screen, only simple monochrome graphics, and a slow disk drive (not a hard disk!). They call it technological advances. My phone today has more resources as the mainframe I had access too at that time. Progress can't be stopped.

My first Photoshop was Photoshop 3 or 4, I do not even remember well.

BTW: My current computer, with a powerful CPU (not the most powerful CPU available), and a medium graphics card (as prices were off at the time I did build this system) is blazing fast (but I guess Photoshop CS4 would be faster, if I could still install and run it on this machine).

[Russ_Peters]

Thats the main reason I still use Photoshop 7. It has all the features I
need and runs very well in Windows 11 aside of having to make a virtual
drive for the scratch disk under 1tb every time I want to open it.

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[Kevin24804496rcz2]

I am Unable To Use Adobe on my windows 10 can Any one can help me with that I am logo designer  but their is an error kindly please help me

[moderator removed an unrelated link. You can get banned by posting links here that are not related to your question or a solution]

[Abambo]

If you elaborated your error message, someone may be able to help.

[Zylaris]

I solved the problem I had: I found out that my Dropbox membership wasn't renewed and everything got copyed into my HDD filling it up and having no more room for anything else. I renewed it and everything got copied back online saving space in my HDD.

[siobhanf11160300]

Good Morning, I am starting a new photoshop project & but message comes up saying scratch discs are full?

kind regards

Siobhān Ferguson

[D Fosse]

Please show a screenshot of Edit > Preferences > Scratch disks:

Generally, raster image editing moves massive amounts of data around, much more than any RAM you may have installed. This temporary working data has to go somewhere, so it's written to disk. That's the scratch disk.

For casual work with small files, you can get away with 30 - 50 GB. For serious work, you should have 500 GB - 1 TB.

[emilyp24827230]

I am having this problem too.  When I press option/command to try to move scratch disk to alternative hard drive this comes up and doesn't give me any option to change disk.  Any ideas?  I can't get into PS at all.  I have cleared up a lot of my hard drive but still won't let me in.  Help!   Typically in the middle of some work. so need it to work!

[Lumigraphics]

First of all, with only 3.5GB free on your startup drive, your computer could crash. Make sure you have given Photoshop permission to access external drives and definitely clear up space before things go very, very wrong.

[1Mollybird]

For some reason Photoshop doesn't even see my two external LaCie drives. So nothing works to help this.

[Nancy OShea]

For some reason Photoshop doesn't even see my two external LaCie drives. So nothing works to help this.

By 1Mollybird

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Your externals probably aren't formatted correctly.

macOS: APFS or macOS Extended (Journaled)

Windows: NTFS, exFAT, FAT32

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/scratch-disks-preferences.html