Scratch disks full in photoshop and can't save any image - Mac OS

[Chandran5FBA]

Hi, 

I just only bought the monthly photoshop and having this prob which is really irritating me. 
The downloadble version of photoshops was so good and easy. 

Everytme i want to save a file , photoshop is telling me - 

Scratch disks full.

I need help.  I had to hold OPTION and COMMAND and open photoshop everytime for this error to go off.

I cannot be doing this forever.

Is there any help here? 

[D Fosse]

That message usually means exactly what it says. Raster image editing requires huge amounts of memory, much more than any RAM you may have installed - so temporary working data are written to disk. This is the scratch disk.

In other words - this isn't a Photoshop setting or preference, this is real, physical disk space needed for normal operation. How much free space do you have?

Most people underestimate the space needed for the scratch disk. 100GB should be considered bare minimum, but personally I would never be comfortable with anything less than 500GB (I have much more).

[Chandran5FBA]

Hi, 

I jusT bought a new MAC. iMac (24-inch, M1, 2021)11.5.2 Mac OS Big Sur.

I have 20 GB free storage available out of 245GB.

[D Fosse]

That's clearly not enough. A disk with only 20 GB left is for all practical purposes full, and you need to do something to clear out space.

Quite aside from Photoshop, a disk that full will soon give you other and more serious problems. I can fill up 20 GB in minutes! I have single files approaching that size.

If you're going to do serious work in Photoshop, a single 250 GB drive is going to give you problems. At the very least, you can't have anything other than the operating system and applications on that drive. Everything else should go to other drives. You should never allow a drive to fill up more than 60-70% or so, especially not an active system drive.

Start by getting another disk and move as much as you can over. Then look at cleaning up your user account, which is where most of the junk tends to accumulate. For Windows there is a brilliant little utility called WinDirStat which shows you exactly what's filling up your drives and where it is, can't recall what the Mac equivalent is called.

[Chandran5FBA]

How much space do we need for psd to function well in my MAC.

[davescm]

It's a hard one to answer as it depends on the size of the images in pixels, number of layers, complexity (e.g. smart objects and their content), the number of open images you work with, what functions you use (e.g. stitching panoramas )....etc.

I would normally advise 100GB free scratch space as a minimum but personally use a fast disk NVMe with  more than 1TB free.

Dave

[D Fosse]

Right. I could have written Dave's post, word for word 😉

[Chandran5FBA]

So I must upgrade my MAC? Awww.. I dun know if my current MAC allows this or not or I should use external storage to work?

[Lumigraphics]

You will have to buy at least one external hard drive both for scratch disk space and to store files. You have filled your internal drive.

[Mohit Goyal]

Hi there,

We're sorry for the scratch disk issue. Which Photoshop version do you have installed? You should have at least 20BG free space on the internal drive or a set scratch disk. For more troubleshooting steps, check out the following troubleshooting article: https://adobe.ly/3tIfn26

Let us know the outcome.

Thanks,

Mohit

[davescm]

20GB free space is nowhere near enough scratch space for practical work. Photoshop will open, but will soon choke and throw up that error.

Dave

[jane-e]

The Adobe Help page recommends only 20GB minimum, which happens to  be the exact same amount @Chandran5FBA has that is giving her the scratch disk error message. Sigh.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/troubleshoot-scratch-disk-is-full.html

[D Fosse]

Right, Jane. I've said for a long time that Adobe's official system requirements are misleading their customers. Granted, it has gone up from a mere 3 GB (!) to the current recommendation of 20, but any experienced user knows that's nowhere near enough. As demonstrated here.

So let's be clear. The official system requirements lets you install and launch the application, but that's it. If you're going to do serious work, you need a lot more.

[Bob_Hallam]

To solve this probem you will need more scratch disk space.  Purchase a cheap 250gb external drive (or larger) and after connecting it select that drive as the scratch disk PS uses in the PS pref's.  Your problem will be over 🙂 

[Lumigraphics]

US$100 buys you around 5-6TB of USB external drive space. Make sure you have a dock or the drive is USB-C.

[PECourtejoie]

Hi, I would rather move files and unneded documents to the external drive (maybe purchase a cheaper "spinning" hard drive as well, to store the files in two locations), and allocate more internal disk space for the scratch disk.