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Scratch Disks Full.

p3

New Member
Scratch Disks Full is what i keep getting in photoshop. But my hard drive shows I have 40+ gigs free but whenever i get to messing with certain files its taking up all of that...what could be the problem? do you guys run into this often?
 

jc1cell

New Member
In my experience using the software, I have found that the scratch disk fills up rather quickly when working with large files. You can try reducing the cache levels in the preferences and also purging history and such via edit menu.

Also, maybe allotting more RAM to the app via preferences may help if you have some available. Be sure to leave enough available for the OS to work properly and not bog you down on that end.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
 
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p3

New Member
ya, on my personal computer I do. On my system where I work it doesn't and it keeps freezing and not allowing me to do anything. The IT guy was telling me that it is unlikely that PS would be using this much space and thats why i was posting on here to see if anyone else has ran into this problem. I just don't notice it on my home machine because I have one 500gb hard drive and then a 1tb hard drive with a 350 external for back ups of all my files.
 

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
We added a 75GB hard drive as a dedicated scratch disk and it was a major improvement to PS performance. Probably paid for itself in saved time the first week.
 

GypsyGraphics

New Member
There's a good chance your problem is fragmented memory. Read up on External Fragmentation & Data Fragmentation as well as memory allocation.

External Fragmentation:
when free storage becomes divided into many small pieces over time. The result is that although free storage is available, it is effectively unusable because it is divided into pieces that are too small to satisfy the demands of the application.

Data Fragmentation: occurs when a piece of data in memory is broken up into many pieces that are not close together. It is typically the result of attempting to insert a large object into storage that has already suffered external fragmentation.

When a file system is created, there is free space to store file blocks together contiguouslyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contiguous. This allows for rapid sequential file reads and writes. However, as files are added, removed, and changed in size, the free space becomes externally fragmented, leaving only small holes in which to place new data.
 

choucove

New Member
Clear all your temporary files using the Disk Cleanup Utility. You will be amazed how much space this can free up from old temporary files. When you view the total space used/free on your hard drive normally, it does not always include a lot of the temporary files already on the computer for certain programs. Additionally, Photoshop does use a ton of space for temp files when working with larger files, more than you might think. I'd say if you are seeing only 40 GB of free space on your computer, then yes it's because your drive is "full" by fragmented and temporary files. Again, there are ways to help take care of this and give you a little extra room.

First, do a Disk Cleanup as I mentioned before, and remove all temporary internet files, setup files, and old temporary archived files if possible. Second, do a full disk defragmentation of the drive. Third, go into Photoshop and just double check the preferences set for the scratch disk.
 

SignBurst PCs

New Member
I would recommend a separate drive just for scratch space. Larger files can use a LOT of scratch space. We have customers that need 500+ GB of scratch space on their larger files.

Even if you have the space (unfragmented) on your C: drive, I would still recommend a separate drive dedicated to scratch. It is a no-brainer for me. The performance gains that you will see are significant.
 
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