Photoshop thinks my external scratch disk is same size as my local drive

[Benjamin91]

I haven't found anyone else online experiencing this particular issue with scratch disks. Hope someone can help.

I have approx 300gb free space on my external drive, and am using it as a scratch disk. Now Photoshop tells me the scratch disk is full, and when I see the list of disks available, it shows *exactly* the same free space on the external drive, as my local drive (also on another partition).

I have tried,

Rebooting the mac and Photoshop,

Reinstalling Photoshop both with saving my settings, and a complete clean reinstall all settings deleted,

Running first aid on the drive,

Restarting the drive,

Nothing helps.

[JJMack]

It looks like Photoshop is having issues with your Mac system. I find it hard to believe all you disk have exactly the same amount of free space. Make sure you have address all the Mac related issues with Photoshop.

[Benjamin91]

Can you explain youself clearer? This answer gives me no clue as to what you are suggesting.

[Anaiah22544000fanw]

I also am having the same issue - did you ever find a solution?

[Benjamin91]

I never did. I moved to iCloud drive, so I could have everything "locally"

[D Fosse]

Make sure the other disks are correctly formatted (APFS or HFS+) - not exFAT which doesn't work well in later MacOS versions.

[PECourtejoie]

Hello, also ensure that you give permissions to Photoshop to access the other drives.

By settings, do you mean the preferences? 

[deliar87327234]

I have the same issue. My external Drive has 500 GB! yet I still get Scratch disk Full Error and when I check it shows the same amount of space in both internal memory and external drive. I have updated OS, deleted PS, reinstalled. Still the same for a year now..

[hannah5CB4]

1. having this same problem for over a year now, has anyone found a solution?

[deliar87327234]

Still the same for me , 1-2 years like this. I'm just looking forward to the moment I'll have a new laptop and I will use a brand new SSD card. THAT is my only hope, I tried everything.

[Krew Visuals]

Did you ever find a solution? This happened to me out of nowhere after never having this problem and it has to be the most frustrating issue ive had with adobe. 

[silk-m]

Is it a different device?
Perhaps it's a different volume on the same device (Container).

APPLE SSD AP1024R Media, Conteiner disk3

CT1000P2SSD8 Media, Conteiner disk7

Different volumes of the same container share free space and will be the same size.

[Krew Visuals]

 This bug with Adobe happened infront of my eyes out of nowhere for 1st time after using photoshop daily for 5 years. I always use Lacie External Drives with over 4-5TB of free space checked on my scratch disk settings (as shown on drive settings in photo) Was using photoshop with no issues, computer died, turned it back on, when to make sure my external drive was checked per usual, now this new irritating bug shows the external drive with the only space available as my internal drive 

[D Fosse]

computer died, turned it back on

By @Krew Visuals

Any irregular shutdown carries the risk of corrupting preferences. So a full reset is the first thing to do. Preferences are rewritten on every application exit.

We have seen this reported from time to time, always on Mac and always involving external drives. That, to me, indicates that some part of the operating system is involved. I don't know how/why and I've never seen any solution.

If this was me, I'd do whatever it takes to avoid relying on external drives for scratch. That's clearly potentially problematic in more ways than one. It's slow, it's unreliable and it's prone to errors. External drives are for permanent archival storage, not working system data.

As I wrote in another of your threads, your system drive doesn't have to contain more than 100GB-ish of OS and applications. Everything else can be moved to other storage or deleted. Unless you have a 120 GB system drive, that means it can always be used as primary scratch.

Few people realize how much useless junk tends to accumulate in the machine user account. This junk is deposited there by all your applications, and much of it remains after uninstall or upgrades. Start with disk cleanup in the operating system. Then there are free utilities that show you precisely what fills up your drives and where it is.

You've posted a lot of complaints, both specific and unspecific. So I just want to repeat that if you give Photoshop good hardware and a clean operating system, it works flawlessly and reliably. There is nothing inherent in Photoshop that causes these problems.

[Krew Visuals]

Ive tried everything you suggested, even a brand new external drive out of the package, along with others but still get the same bug, showing only the space available on internal drive.

Adobe remote supprt tried anything and everything for 2.5 hour session and a half hour session the following day with no solution. Hard resets, cleaning/renaming files etc. Crazy there seems to be no solution to this bug. Not sure how it can be the hardwear either when everything on this end is practially new with no issues ever. Oh well