Participating Frequently

Question

Scratch Disks full

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
December 8, 2015
3 replies
26581 views

I am currently using Photoshop CC 2015 and am unable to open most of my files or use certain tools (like the brush tool, eraser, and selection tools) because a notification stating "Could not complete your request because the scratch disks are full" keeps on appearing. I saw an answer to a similar problem suggesting to go to Photoshop>Preferences>Scratch Disks and to delete the disk, but I am not sure of how to delete my disk and of the effects it will have on the application and the running of the program. I have already deleted a majority of my photoshop files, but the problem persists. How can I clear the scratch disks and have Photoshop run smoothly again?

scratch disk full

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Freaky techie

Participant

I don't know if this will be helpful but it's worth a try. Go to preferences>performance

Give Photoshop about 2000 of RAM space.

Click OK

Go to file and click new

Change the bit to 8

Should work..sorry could not post screen shots as I am travelling.

All the best

H

hengz81820164

Known Participant

@Freaky techie: I gave PS 20GB RAM (I have 32GB RAM installed), but encountered the same error. Freeing disk space is the best way out.

melissapiccone

Community Expert

‌is your hard drive full? need room to work... Should have at least 30% free space on your hard drive.

Melissa Piccone | Adobe Trainer | Online Courses Author | Fine Artist

gabriellef26942479Author

Participating Frequently

No the hard drive is not full- I think there is about 30% free

Akash Sharma

Legend

Hi gabriellef26942479

This issue occurs when Photoshop have issues accessing your Scratch disk because it might be full or have error.

Close Photoshop.

Hold down CTRL+ALT(PC) / CMD+OPTION(Mac) as soon as Photoshop starts to get this menu:

Select another disk with enough disk space.

Click OK

Let us know if that helps

~Akash

gabriellef26942479Author

Participating Frequently

I switched to the other option, but I still can not open some files.

D Fosse

Community Expert

What's "the other option"?

Photoshop moves such large amounts of data around, that RAM is usually not enough. So it has to write much of it to your hard drive, and that's known as the scratch file. It's just a temporary file that gets deleted when Photoshop quits, but as you work it has to go somewhere.

You can put it wherever you want, as per the screenshot above. By default it goes to your C drive - but if you don't have enough free space on your C drive, you get this message. Then you either need to free up space, or direct the scratch disk to another drive that has enough.

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