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PS eating all my storage space

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
January 22, 2025
3 replies
1506 views

I save my project files with adobe cloud and install all my apps on a different storage drive (Disk D) including adobe softwares.

When opening PS, it takes my 20gb of my storage drive where my OS (Disk C) is only installed. When using it, 100gb free in my Disk C are gone and turns it to NTFS and makes me unable to save my file locally, or even as cloud save/storage because of PS. Despite use the other drive, Disk D for cloud storage and scratch disk, temp files etc, this still happened.

Already purge my files and even remove scratch disk options are now gone. Still, it's not enough to save locally or on cloud.

Windows

Correct answer D Fosse

This isn't a bug. You're running out of scratch disk space - or, rather, you already have run out.

Raster image editing requires huge amounts of memory - much more than any RAM you may have installed. So all this temporary working data are written to disk. This is the scratch disk. Think of the scratch disk as Photoshop's main memory, with RAM acting as a cache holding the most current data.

The scratch file contains all history states for all open documents, plus overhead for some special functions. Each history state potentially adds the full uncompressed file size. Scratch sizes will be orders of magnitude bigger than your nominal starting file sizes.

It makes no sense to install the application on a different drive than the system drive. You only save a GB or two, which is absolutely negligible in this context.

What makes sense is to keep the application installed on C, where it runs much more efficiently, and direct the scratch disk to a different drive. Make sure it's fast and has enough space! You will normally need around 200 - 500 GB free space for the scratch disk to be safe. Sometimes more.

In any case, a lot of Photoshop files will go to your user account on the C drive. It will fill up regardless.

Never allow a system drive to fill up more than 70% or so!

Ged_Traynor

Community Expert

@AlJay there's no real benefit to installing apps on a separate drive to the OS, applications still need to write information to the C drive and the installer still installs some components there too

A

AlJayAuthor

Participant

Thank you for clarification, I didn't know scratch disk actually take up that much space and just noticed it just recently due to saving problems. Will try to move around my local files.

As for my installation location, i always do this to have a clean separate with my OS, other softwares and saved files. In case some of my disk fails, everything isn't compromise, this is just my personal preference though.

Thank you again.

davescm

Community Expert

Way back in time, I used to do the same separating the OS from the apps on different drives. Now I install both on a single C: drive although I still use the 😧 drive for data storage and for the Photoshop scratch files. Image files are on a totally separate internal drive.

As far as protection from drive failure, I use back up software (I use Macrium but others are available) to do daily back ups onto an external drive. Macrium works to a schedule set by the user. In my case it is a monthly full back up of every internal drive, a weekly differential back up of anything that has changed since the last full back up, a daily incremental back up of anything that has changed since the last differential back up. That gives me access to restore any file, drive, or even the full PC to any point in time stored on the external drive. Macrium also creates a thumbdrive from which you can run the software and restore even after a total failure - thankfully I've never needed that. This is not an advert for Macrium - other such software is available.

Dave

D Fosse

Correct answer

Community Expert

This isn't a bug. You're running out of scratch disk space - or, rather, you already have run out.

Raster image editing requires huge amounts of memory - much more than any RAM you may have installed. So all this temporary working data are written to disk. This is the scratch disk. Think of the scratch disk as Photoshop's main memory, with RAM acting as a cache holding the most current data.

The scratch file contains all history states for all open documents, plus overhead for some special functions. Each history state potentially adds the full uncompressed file size. Scratch sizes will be orders of magnitude bigger than your nominal starting file sizes.

It makes no sense to install the application on a different drive than the system drive. You only save a GB or two, which is absolutely negligible in this context.

What makes sense is to keep the application installed on C, where it runs much more efficiently, and direct the scratch disk to a different drive. Make sure it's fast and has enough space! You will normally need around 200 - 500 GB free space for the scratch disk to be safe. Sometimes more.

In any case, a lot of Photoshop files will go to your user account on the C drive. It will fill up regardless.

Never allow a system drive to fill up more than 70% or so!

D

default Maria

Participating Frequently

Hi There,

I'd like to jump on this conversation as I am having similar issue since I work on the Imac 24, M3.
I never really had issue with scratch disk before, and I wondered if you had a look into how does Mac handles Photoshop now. I work on files that are in beetween 500MB and 1GB, temporarely going up to 2GB while working.
And photoshope uses up to 50GB of Disk Space, getting everything to crash.
I am convinced some of those work in progress data are useless to the good fonctionning of the software, is there a way to limit the amount of storage space it would use to run ?
Does the setting I have attached look good to you ? or Could I maybe save some scratch disk space by changing some of it ?
Thank you for your help !

E

ExUSA

Legend

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

You can reduce history states, save your files often, and I strongly recommend using an external USB-C or Thunderbolt SSD for additional scratch disk space.

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