Proper Media Cache Storage for Multiuser Computers

[Scott Cia]

Hi All,

I have running into hard drive space issues regarding Media Cache files for computers on a college campus. There are up to 5-10 different students and projects rotating around a number few of our editing suite iMac's. This semester, each of the computers ran into hard drive space issues. From basic troubleshooting and working with a few students, it seems that the hard drives are getting filled up with Media Cache files. I sent an email with instructions to students to clear the files, but two issues. 1) Did they go through the steps to do it and 2) the project they open back up fills it right back up in a short amount of time.

Any recommendations on ways that we can avoid OS hard drive from filling up? Is there a way to clear out media cache files across all users? I do not have access to their users files.

A few things I have thought of.

1) Would setting up a preferences file for each student to copy to their user folders make sense? Set the media cache preferences to not exceed xxGB of space and delete after xx number of days.

2) If setting these preferences, would connecting a fast external hard drive and changing the cache files to save on the external make sense?

Note: Each user account/folder gets created when they sign in. So we are not able to deploy the preferences beforehand.

Any thoughts on this would be a huge help.

Thank you!

[Andy 1968]

I would think each student would have an external hard drive to store their projects. You could get a network storage solution with 7 or 8 hard drives in a RAID 0 (40 to 120 terabytes) setup.  The students could then transfer their projects from the RAID array to an external hard drive. 

[Scott Cia]

Sorry just seeing this as notifications got sent to my spam. They usually do a great job setting their projects and scratch disks to externals, but they do not go through the media cache settings to set those to their hard drive.

[Steve Griffiths]

Cache files going to the 'users' folder on the 'C' drive is an on-going issue within a multi-user environment I'm in too ...

It's so easy to forget to assign locations for not only cache preferences but Project Settings for 'Scratch disks' (preview media etc.) as well.

I'm guilty of this, particularly when bringing in an externally supplied project. And as you point out, other users cannot delete someone elses cache files - this needs someone with admin rights.

So no solution except to have a very clear set of instructions on starting a new Premiere Pro project and specifying what the cache and scratch settings should be.

I should note we also have separate drives for media (raid array) AND a seperate internal (SSD) drive on each machine specifically just for cache files.

Assigning caches files to an external raid created throughput issues (thousands of small files) and slowed down the network so a separate internal (or direct attached) drive just for cache works well.

Another tip (for the inevitable time people forget to set the cache destination) is have each user regularly search %appdata% and navigate to the 'Adobe' > 'common' folder and delete their own cache files at the end of their session.

[Scott Cia]

Thanks for the information here. I think they all seem good in setting their Scratch Disks to their external hard drives especially since the default is to save in the same location as the project file. It's the media cache that I do not think they set, but also trying to dive into whether or not the professors are teaching them that part. We are looking into how we can deploy Premiere preferences to each users accounts as they get created and set the preferences to delete cache older than xx days and a limit on how many GB the user cache can use. Hopefully that at least will help.

[Steve Griffiths]

Yeah, it's the cache files that always cause issues for us to. They default to the Adobe 'common' folder on the C drive. All these edits suites have small (but fast) SSDs and with multiple users can fill up very quickly causing many issues. I'd be very interested if you do come up with a global solution for deploying a control on cache file locations. I suspect out Post IT people have probably tried to do this ... but there may not be a solution.