Scratch disk error effectively brick my work

[Piotr Braszak]

I am absolutely sure that scratch disk problem is everyone's problem, but never have I had it so severe.

Due to work circumstances, the repository of my project, and the software used, my disk has become pretty much fully filled. Out of 500GB SSD I am left with 23GB free space. This should be enough for Photoshop to work fine, but alas, it is not.

I can run PS fine and work on it for some time, but every now and then, during an operation, the 'SCRATCH DISK FULL" error appears, which effectively prevents me from doing anything. I get it, PS needs space to work, but there's still 6GB free space to work with, and Photoshop tells me that's NOT ENOUGH?!

More to that. When the error appears, this basically hardlocks my work. I cannot move any layer, I can not do any operation, I can not, and this is most important, SAVE MY WORK!!!

Why is Photoshop unable to save a 131MB file while having 6GB free of scratch disk space? This is a bug that a 60EUR software should not have at all.

And please do not tell me to buy additional disk space or move files to external disk. This is a software problem that I refuse to take responsibility for.

[D Fosse]

Raster image editing moves huge amounts of data. There is no such thing as "enough RAM", no matter how much you have, so the scratch disk handles Photoshop's main memory. RAM is more a fast access cache.

23 GB is nothing. You have a critical disk space situation that you need to tend to ASAP. You will soon have much bigger problems than Photoshop.

The scratch file contains all history states for all open documents, plus overhead for smart objects, some AI functions etc. Every history state can potentially add the full uncompressed file size.

In other words, the scratch file will be orders of magnitude bigger than your nominal starting file sizes. My standard recommendation for most "normal" work is 250-500 GB, but sometimes more. I have several TB.

[jane-e]

And please do not tell me to buy additional disk space or move files to external disk. This is a software problem that I refuse to take responsibility for.

By @Piotr Braszak

It's your choice, of course, but if you want Photoshop to work on your computer, you need more free space.

Jane