Scratch disk reporting full with 200gb free space

[afeinphoto]

I occassionally work with large files and this one is kicking back a scratch disk full error. 200gb free hd space.  PS only seeing 60gb for some reason.   MBP m1max.   Cant figure this one out. 

thank you.

[LAMY2017]

These might help --

Troubleshoot scratch disk full errors in Photoshop

Known issues in Photoshop

[afeinphoto]

unfortunately no.  these are all standard checks which ive already been through. 20yr PS user. 

[LAMY2017]

If you watch the video on the webpage

Troubleshoot scratch disk full errors in Photoshop

one option is to attach an external drive to use as a scratch disk. A quick look on Amazon shows a Sandisk 256G Ultra Drive, $22.99 US.

Tell more about where you see the 200 GB HD -vs- 60 GB in Ps. I'm always up for learning new things in Ps, like where hard drive space is displayed.

In Finder, control-click on Macintosh HD, Get Info, Capacity and Available.

[Conrad_C]

If you go into Photoshop Preferences / Scratch Disks and it reports less free space than macOS does out in the Finder Desktop, this sort of thing has been seen on recent versions of macOS. It may be related to changes Apple made about how macOS counts free space.

The short answer is:

Free up more space until Photoshop thinks there’s enough free space for the size of document you’re trying to open. It won’t help to look at the free space numbers, because of the explanation in the “geeky answer” below. Just keep freeing up space until Photoshop decides there’s enough. If it isn’t practical to free up so much space on your startup volume, do the next thing below… 

Sometimes I attach a large, empty, fast external SSD (for example, 1TB) and assign it as the primary scratch disk. If you do this, make sure the SSD has at least 500GB free, the more the better if you’re opening huge files. This part is nothing new. Over 10 years ago people were already saying to keep over 200GB of free space on the scratch disk if you want to open very large files, and files are even larger today.

Geeky answer:

On current Macs, very different amounts of free space can be reported depending on where you look (the macOS Finder, Apple Disk Utility, various non-Apple applications…). Right now on my Mac, Photoshop says there’s 216GB free, Apple macOS Finder says there’s 265GB free, and Apple Disk Utility says I have 234GB free. So even two apps by Apple are reporting different free space numbers. Obviously, that is weird. I don’t have the technical background to know whether Photoshop, Finder, or Disk Utility is the most correct about available free space. And there is actually a possibility that we normal users can’t ever know exactly which amount is the right one, because the way macOS reports free space today is extremely confusing. A couple of articles by the excellent Howard Oakley help explain how this came to be:

The Finder confuses with wildly inaccurate figures for available space

Where does macOS get its volume free space figures from?

Based on the end of the first article, one thing you can try to free up more space right now is to go into Disk Utility and select the startup volume. If there are any local Time Machine snapshots listed for that volume, delete them and see if Photoshop thinks there is enough space after that. It’s best to delete them only after making sure your backups are up to date, because if they are, you shouldn‘t need the local snapshots any more.

[afeinphoto]

Thanks Conrad.   Considering the amount of updates there have been to the OSX framework it wouldnt surprise me that adobe hasnt kept up.  200gb+ free should be plenty to run any file.  As I've worked with this size before without issue.   I can understand some discrepency in space but 220gb to 60gb makes no sense to me.  In fact, even after clearing trash and restarting the computer, PS will not show more than the 59.07gb available for scratch.  So my guess is a bug.   

That being said the only way to test would be an external so will try that next.  Just another expense and step.  Appreciate the info and brainstorm.

[LAMY2017]

That being said the only way to test would be an external so will try that next. Just another expense and step.

Just reminding you that $23 is a cheap way to experiment. My last post:

" A quick look on Amazon shows a Sandisk 256G Ultra Drive, $22.99 US." That's half the size of my MacAir's hard disk. That's hundreds of dollars less than an external SSD or drive.

[afeinphoto]

have an external coming to test. 

[Conrad_C]

Yeah, I didn’t think that simply emptying the trash would fix the problem, that’s why I didn’t even mention that. I think addressing newer types of purgeable files, such as APFS snapshots, is more effective at raising the amount of free space.

Despite that I do continue to see that, on different scratch volumes that are connected, Photoshop consistently reports less free space than the Finder or Disk Utility (which even disagree with each other about APFS free space, as I pointed out). It’s possible that there’s a bug in free space reporting, either in Photoshop or in a macOS API that Photoshop uses.

I don’t know how true this is, but it’s also possible that Photoshop might subtract an unstated reserve amount of storage that it avoids so that its scratch files won’t consume all available free space. Because letting that happen would certainly be bad for system stability.

[afeinphoto]

So I just click to PS again (it's almost always open) and decided to check the scratch disk and now its showing 160gb.  No new restart of computer or program (had done both already when troubleshooting).    So it decided to fix itself for no reason...weeeee.