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Faith34748666cpc2
Participant
January 12, 2024
Question

Scratch Disk but I have plenty of storage!!!

  • January 12, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 1203 views

I have been having problems the last few days with my scratch disk being full and my computer not having enough memory to run simple functions in Adobe Photoshop. I spent a significant amount of time clearing up space on my computer so that I would have simply enough space to run Adobe, but then I was getting an error message about my Mac's RAM. I called Apple and they told me that my computer was completely fine and had plenty of storage and memory, so this had to be an Adobe issue. I called Adobe and the technician who helped me changed some performance settings around and that seemed to have done the trick. Now it is the next day and I am once again having "scratch disk full" errors even though I have plenty of storage!!!

 

Please help!

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2 replies

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 13, 2024

Show a screenshot of Photoshop > Settings > Scratch Disks.

 

There has been an issue where either MacOS reports the wrong amount to Photoshop, or Photoshop doesn't read it correctly - but generally, "scratch disk full" is a very real message that means exactly what it says.

 

Few people realize how much memory, real and virtual, is required in advanced raster image editing, with the emphasis on advanced. It moves huge amounts of data around. There is no such thing as "enough RAM", no matter how much you have installed. Temporary working data need to be stored on disk while Photoshop processes it. This is the scratch disk.

 

Every history state, for every open document, potentially adds the full uncompressed file size. Smart objects and other functions add overhead. The scratch file will be many orders of magnitude bigger than your nominal file sizes.

 

For Photoshop to run efficiently, you should aim for at least 200 GB free space. Personally, I would never be comfortable with anything less than 500.

Jeff Arola
Community Expert
Jeff ArolaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 13, 2024

What version of photoshop and macOS are you using?

 

Is there something specific your doing when you get the Scratch Disk message?

 

A common cause is creating a document in inches or cm when you want pixels.

 

When you open photoshop, but before opening a file, go to Help>System Info and see what it says under

Scratch volume(s):

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