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jonw84637587
Participant
October 20, 2021
Question

Photoshop using massive amount of disk space when opening a PSD and then scratch disks are full

  • October 20, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 2570 views

I've got 45gb of free space on my scratch disk, the moment I open photoshop it drops down to around 25gb, and then when I open a certain file that drops down to 11gb. And then when I try to do anything on that file Photoshop just throws up the Scratch Disks are full error. The file I'm opening is relatively big, but less than 1gb.

 

Why does this happen and what can I do to prevent it?

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3 replies

davescm
Community Expert
davescmCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 20, 2021

It happens because Photoshop uses temporary disk space (i.e. scratch space) as an extension to working memory. How large the scratch disk grows depends on the file(s) in use, the content of those files e.g number of layers , smart objects, history states , and what functions are being executed on the files. It is not uncommon to see the scratch disk file go larger than 100GB regardless of available RAM size (I have 128GB RAM here and Photoshop still needs plenty of scratch disk space).

 

Dave

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    D FosseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 20, 2021

    This is expected. You simply don't have enough scratch disk space, get more.

     

    Most people underestimate the free disk space needed for Photoshop's scratch disk. The official system requirements are just enough to install (and maybe open) the application, but for serious work you need orders of magnitude more.

     

    Raster image editing moves huge amounts of data around, and it needs to go somewhere. There is no such thing as "enough RAM", no matter how much you have installed.

     

    For most normal situations, 250 GB free space should be considered absolute minimum. If you're working with large files, or many files open at the same time, 500 GB to 1 TB is more realistic.

      J
      jonw84637587Author
      Participant
      October 20, 2021

      I respectfully disagree that this is expected requirements that I need to have 250gb at a minimum when I've been using Photoshop 2021 daily since it was released, and only recently has this started coming up.

       

      My MacBook Pro only has 250gb in total as available space, I don't think it's unreasonable for me to be of the expectation that I should be able to open a large, but not outrageously so, .PSD file and be able to use any functionality at all without thinking "I need to literally delete everything else on my hard drive to run this."

      c.pfaffenbichler
      Community Expert
      c.pfaffenbichlerCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      October 20, 2021

      Have you bothered reading the page on Scratch Disks? 

      What are your Performance and Scratch Disk Preferences settings? 

      c.pfaffenbichler
      Community Expert
      c.pfaffenbichlerCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      October 20, 2021

      What have you done for Photoshop Performance so far? 

      https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html

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

       

      Can you assess a larger Scratch Drive? 

       

      The filesize on disk is not exactly the relevant measure as psd/psb files are compressed by default. 

      What are the image’s pixel dimensions, Color Mode and bit depth? 

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