Scratch Disks Full Editing Gigapixel Images - Typical Solutions Do Not Work

[Deven15D5]

This isn't the usual newbie scratch drive stuff. I'm not looking for common answers. Thank you.

Has anyone who works on gigapixel sized images or other extremely large file sizes, found a way around the scratch disk full error you get even if you have tons of hard drive space?

I have many TERRABYTES of room on multiple drives for scratch. But PS thinks my drive/s are full after I've been at it for a while. Doesn't matter how I swap the different drives around.

It would be fine if I could shut down PS and restart, but often the error comes as a surprise after I've been editing very large files for a while and then I can't save my work and lose it all.

Anyway, I've read various threads about scratch issues going back years and nobody seems to have an aswer to this specific big file type problem. You can purge, or change drives for scratch, turn one off, another on, in preferences, reset preferences, but nothing works.

What is limiting PS from keeping on writing scratch files and filling gobs more of hard drive space? Is there some sort of hard limit in the code that says "Nope, that's all you get for scratch! We don't care that you have ten other hard drives begging to be used."

Thanks for any help. I'm on Windows 10 btw.

[D Fosse]

Can you show a screenshot of Preferences > Scratch Disks?

What are the pixel dimensions of the document? How many history states?

[Deven15D5]

Hi D Fosse,

I attached the screen shot. Pixel dimensions are often at or over 250000 X 25000 px. And also often with numerous layers. History states I have set to 1000 and have never hit my limit to the best of my memory. I have 448 GB of memory with Photoshop's allowance set to max at 365K GB. 49 Xeon Gold cores, and a RTX 3090 with 24 GB of video memory.

I realize I do very uncommon work. There's other big frusterations/bugs, etc., with PS when working on super large images, but I've gotten used to those problems and they don't cause me to lose my work. But this scratch disk full when there's ample room drives me crazy. I try to remember to save often, but when you are saving files as big as mine, it takes forever and its hard on your drives. Thus I don't use autosave. Then, sometimes you just plain forget to save. Regardless, once you hit that scratch disk mystery hard limit, all work of any type and saving comes to a screeching halt and PS has to be shut down to recoup, with all extra drive space ignored.

On that note, some of my drives are enterprise level SSD drives. Drive type does not make a difference. 

My guess is nobody will have any solutions and Adobe won't fix the issue since us gigapixel guys are one in a million. But, figured I would post and give it a shot. I've tried to figure it out for years now, but to no avail.

Thanks for your reply!

[Deven15D5]

Why is there no way to correct mistakes in my post Adobe??

Memory should say 365GB, not 365K GB.

[Deven15D5]

Guess I'm still asleep. Cores should be 48, not 49. Lol.

[Test Screen Name]

Ok, you write

  But PS thinks my drive/s are full after I've been at it for a while. 

so I assume you disagree. I've seen many people who disagreed, but usually Photoshop is right. There's a simple test you need to do, because it changes completely the direction to go. When you get the message saying scratch disks are full, LEAVE THE MESSAGE ON SCREEN. While the message is on screen, leave Photoshop frozen and go back to Windows and check the free space on your five scratch disks. Maybe a screen shot from File Explorer would be interesting. (Clearly if you reply to the message Photoshop may release some space, that's why the message needs to still be on screen).

[Deven15D5]

Thanks for your reply. Yes, the drives are not full whether the message is there or not, including the primary. I've checked them many times. Like I said earlier, it is as if there's a hard limit in PS as to how much scratch you can have regardless of drive space. Or, some other alien issue I have yet to figure out after years of this.

[D Fosse]

1000 history states?!? No wonder you get scratch disk full messages...

You do realize that each history state can potentially be the full size of the image?

[Deven15D5]

I have that available but it doesn't mean I'm using that many. It's not relevant. I can work for hours until suddenly I can't. When it can take up to twenty minutes just to load my files, I would like to not deal with this issue.  And, as I mentioned, even with purge or deleting history manually, once I hit the scratch disk full error, there's nothing I can do to undo PS thinking the disks are full. That is the core issue here.

Like I said earlier, I can turn off the primary scratch drive (which is not full itself) and put another one with even more substantial space in its place, but PS refuses to see I've done that. It's not a history states issue to me. It's a bug, or a limitation in the code.

Let's consider if I loaded up several of my massive files and did no editing at all. Eventually I will hit the scratch drives full error, and even though there is plenty of space, I can not save any of them, if say I needed to. PS is basically in a frozen state at this point where I can't do any further work.

My files sizes are often 100-200GB in size, so it's a unique problem I have. I wasn't expecting solutions, rather just hoping by chance somebody that does odd projects like me may have found a work around. Thanks for your time on it.

[D Fosse]

How do you know? Do you count them? History states go by awfully fast.

In any case, show screenshots from Windows Explorer with the dialog still on screen, as Test Screen Name asked for. We only have your word that they are "not full".

If you have scratch on your system drive, the scratch files will be in the Windows TEMP directory, in your user account. If that's where it fills up, Windows is probably protecting the system from a terminal freeze by halting activity well before the disk is actually full. A system drive that is actually full, turns your computer into an expensive doorstop.

If you have scratch set to non-system drives, the scratch files are easy to see: they will be at the root of the drive.

Bottom line: with those file sizes and unlimited history states, I'm not at all surprised that your scratch disk(s) fill up very quickly. For what you're describing, I would set up at least 5TB of dedicated drives just to deal with scratch. Those are enormous amounts of data, and it all has to go somewhere.

[Deven15D5]

Test Screen Name,

I've attached the image showing the scratch disk error message, with my N drive, not full, and with several other drives not being rolled over to. There are no PS temp files on any other drive. You will note I was able to get the error after a half a dozen history states. And, I don't use the C drive for scratch.

So, yes, PS "thinks" the disks are full, and nothing I can do, that I am aware of, will change that save shutting down. As stated before, purging does not work. Before and after purging all, drive space on N remained exactly the same. Manual deleting of history does not work, switching drives in preferences, or resetting preferences, and so on. PS refuses to release the saved scratch files at this point. Does anyone with experience with extremely large file editing know a work around? Thank you.