Photoshop says it doesn't have enough RAM

[bartonlew]

I recently bought a new computer so that I could run Photoshop editing very large files which was proving impossible on my 7-year old PC.  I got a Dell quad-core gaming laptop with a hard drive of 1TB for my data and 256 GB SSD.  For the most part everything has been going smoothly but after awhile I start getting messages like this:  "Photoshop could not complete this operation because there was not enough memory (RAM)."   I found a post online that I should go to Preferences>Performance>Let Photoshop Use and move the slider up to 100%.  I did that and that helped for awhile but I am now getting these messages again.  The files I am working on are on an external hard drive and not on my PC.  Here are my drive usages:

OS (C:) 162 GB used 62 GB free

DATA (D:) 297 GB used 633 GB free

External hard drive:  878 GB used 983 GB free

Do I not have enough OS disk space to run Photoshop effectively? 

Thanks,

Barton

[gener7 · Accepted solution]

If you have only the OS drive as a scratch disk, you may be running into trouble because of low remaining disk space. Assign your data (D:) disk to the list and see how it goes.

Read this article to understand what Scratch disks are and how to best set them up.

Scratch Disk

[bartonlew]

Thank you for that link.  I read the article, and am ready to assign my D drive as a scratch disk.  But I just want to absolutely certain - doing so will not overwrite data on that drive, will it?  Also, the article said that I should copy the files I am using in my current project to my scratch disk.  My files are on an external hard drive (F drive), so do I need to copy them to the D drive?  Or should I use the 2 TB F drive as my scratch disk - it's using less than 1 TB for the files.  Thank you.

[Ronald Keller]

You can be absolutely sure your files will not be overwritten. But that does not mean you should not make backups. All drives will fail eventually.

A scratch disk is nothing more than free space on any drive you give Photoshop permission to use.

You don't need to move your files to the D drive.

As you have ample space on your D drive and F drive use the fastest of the two as your scratch disk.

[Guest]

Hi

How much RAM do you actually have, gaming PC's/Laptops normally only have 8GB of RAM and you mentioned that you're working with very large files

Never let Photoshop use 100% of RAM you need RAM of other processes like the OS etc, 70% is the recommended

[bartonlew]

16GB.  That's good to know about not letting PS use 100% - I will change that back.  Thanks.

[Modhi5FAE]

I cannot work on the program because there is a message stating that the memory is full. My question is whether Photoshop has a memory or not

[Modhi5FAE]