Creating a scratch disk

I am currently trying to use Final Cut Pro 5 on my emac but it is really slow even though I have 1 gig of RAM. A friend of mine mentioned that if I create a scratch disk it should work faster but did not know how to do it. First question is how do I create a scratch disk and number two will it increase the speed in which Final Cut operates on my machine?
Thank you in advance

To get any performance benefit, you would need an external Firewire hard drive connected to your eMac. Then you set the scratch disk location in FCP's System Settings options. Having scratch on a second disk will probably some benefit, but I doubt that you'll see a lot of improvement. To get significant performance gains, you'd really need to upgrade to a faster system.
Regards.

Similar Messages

Scratch Disk on PhotoshopCC

Hi!
So I was drawing on Photoshop CC, and then, suddenly, a message pops up, saying that my ´scratch disk´ is full..?
Can anyone help me get more space in it?
Thanks <3

I don't know where FCP creates the scratch disk. You will probably need to use FCP to manage it. Check the documentation for FCP or use FCP Help from its Help menu. Otherwise post the question in the FCP forum.
Of course the genius you talked to may not have had a clue what he was talking about. Many don't.

New system with 32gb Ram.....CS5.5 using alot of scratch disk

Hi All,
Been away from these forums for a while.
OK. I have just built my new rig (Asus p9x79 pro, 32GB 1600Mhz DDR3, Intel 3820, old GTX285 1GB, Win7 pro.....many hard drives ) as I am working on a very big project producing 440x240cm200ppi digital drawings to be installed as lightbox artworks at the same size.
My old system just could not cope with the demands I was putting on it as It only had 12gb RAM. I have two scratch disks set up x1 30gb SSD (dedicated) and x1 240gb SSD ( has other stuff on it with 75gb free ). I am also using Photoshop CS5 Extended (updated) with RAM usage set to 80% (23976).
While I realise PS will still make use of the scratch disk despite the amount of RAM I was shocked to see the first drive (30gb) was almost full with 5gb space left when I loaded the PSB file with x9 layers. Looking at the meta data in Bridge it tells me the file size is 6.90GB with pixel dimensions of 34646x18898@200ppi. Windows reports that I am only using 20GB of my 32GB......
Shouldn't PS be using more RAM before going to the slower reads on a SSD? Windows Task Manager tells me I have 8150 RAM cached, 12310 RAM Available and 4215 RAM Free. If Photoshop is not using the 12GB would it be wise to make a 9GB RAMDISK for an addition boost...not even sure if that would work, but, I hate the feeling of having all that RAM and 1/3 not being used.

You referred to the answer to your puzzlement yourself when you typed "I realise PS will still make use of the scratch disk despite the amount of RAM" [emphasis added].
Photoshop creates the scratch disk the instant you open an image file or create a new one. It sets its initial size based on its size, number of layers, history states, etc., regardless of installed RAM. It starts using the scratch disks from the get go, moving stuff off of the scratch disk into RAM and viceversa as Photoshop sees fit.
When setting up a scratch disk, figure on at least 100 times (or more) the size of your largest file, multiplied by the number of files you keep open at any given time.
The total amount of scratch disk space on your two drives (30 GB + 75 GB) is not that large, as per the above calculation.
Just for reference, my dedicated primary scratch disk is a 300 GB physically separate internal hard drive, and I also have other drives set up as secondary, etc., hard drives. Other users have a lot more scratch disk space than I do. I normally have no more than two files open in Photoshop at once, occasionally three or four.
Also keep in mind that the percentage of memory you allocate to Photoshop is not a percentage of total installed RAM but of available memory at any given time after the OS and other applications you have running have grabbed the RAM they need. Therefore the calculation you made is not necessarily accurate.
As to creating a RAM disk, I supposed there's no harm in trying, but the real question is whether you are seeing any real performance problems now, rather than just calculating RAM figures that may or may not be that relevant in actual use.
Conceivably, you could also get a much larger SSD as your primary scratch disk.

The error message "Scratch disk is full" when trying to create

the error message "Scratch disk is full" when trying to create a image/logo in Photoshop CS6

Hi Weed42,
This has been discussed in the following forum links:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1164997
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4968658
Let us know if this helps,
Regards
Gurleen

Is it Necessary to create a New Folder on my Scratch disk for new project?

I am using a MACBOOK Pro with a 1tb scratch disk (loud) and am new to FCPS2. Someone told me to make a new folder on the scratch disk and then let the app build the rest of the folders it needs within it..Is there are reason for his? Do I have to build a new folder for every new project? Does media Manger do this?

Is it better to have
A) a file for each project, with all the Audio Render, Autosave Vault, Capture Scratch, Render Files,
Thumbnail Cache and Waveform Cache folders inside each one? For instance, "Ghost Story/Audio
Render, etc etc" "Music Video/Audio Render, etc etc"
Caches sholud go on your system drive. Autosave should go anyplace except your system drive so you can recover a project if the system goes down. Media folders go on your media drives.
B) All of the Audio Render, Capture Scratch, etc folders, with the project-specific folders spread out between all of these?
They aren't spread out, they're contained within.
but just wondering if there was a quick answer for this--
it seems like FCP wants users to do it according to option B,
but to me option A makes more sense
That's the trouble the OP was having. Attempting to impose your desires onto FCP is dangerous without thorough grounding in the FCP Way. I think Apple's organization structure is lame, unnecessarily restrictive, and confusing. But all of my attempts to impose my own thinking patterns upon FCP lead directly to disaster.
bogiesan

"The scratch disks are write protected or unavailable" on NEW project on PrE

I am running PrE 10 on Windows 7 64 bit. My computer has two internal hard drives (C and E). I want to put my projects and all scratch disks on E, the non-OS drive. When I try to create a NEW project and designate a directory I have already created on E, I get the following message from PrE 10:
"The scratch disks are write protected or unavailable..."
The program won't let me use E. However, when I check the drive, it HAS created a .PRV directory in the Preview Files directory and a .prel file in the Encoded Files directory. So it is actually able to write to drive E.
What gives? Thanks.
Jon

Thanks, Bill and John.
I am running from an administrator account, but I wasn't running "as administrator." I had already changed the permissions to give everybody everything.
Here is what I discovered. Running "as administrator" made no difference. So I ran the program "normally" again. Then I discovered that although the program was giving me the "The scratch disks are write protected or unavailable..." message, it was actually setting things up properly on my E drive. When I continued to use the newly created project, the correct directories and files had been set up on my E drive, and I was able to direct my captures to that drive as well. I haven't done much work on the project yet, but it appears to be working just fine so far.
I just now created ANOTHER new project on the E drive, and PrE did NOT give me the error message. Everything got set up properly. Hmm. It looks as if that message it put out in error, or, at the very least, unhelpfully!
By the way, what is Encore, and how would it play a part here?
Thanks.
Jon

Photoshop Scratch Disk Error OSX 10.7.5

I had a Mac with CS5.5 installed. Suddenly i got an Error Message on Startup: "Could not open a scratch file because the disk is unavailable...."
Unable to solve the Problem I Updated to CS6.0 in hope of fixing the Problem that way. It did not.
So i deleted the User and created a new one which worked, for a while at least. Now i have the same Error again!
After searching around a bit i found this Thread: Re: Photoshop Scratch Disk Error OSX Lion 10.7.3
In this Thread FocusCreative22 found the answer to that Problem. He suggested checking "Ignore Ownership on this Volume" in the Volume Info.
My Problem now is that either through having a newer OS version or only having the Startupdrive i dont have the checkbox "Ignore Ownership on this Volume". How to fix this Problem then?

Chris,
Thank you for responding. I think you're onto something. I looked in disk utility to see if I could repair permissions on the scratch volume, as Lundberg suggested, however the option to do so was greyed out due to this message: "Not available because the selected disk is set to ignore ownership". So I went to the partition, pulled up the Get Info box and saw that the "Ignore Ownership on this Volume" box was not checked. I checked it to see what would happen, and although the option to repair permissions is still greyed out in disk utility, now Photoshop starts up perfectly, even with the problematic scratch partition set as the primary Photoshop Scratch Disk.
Is this the wrong way to get to the right answer?
Concerning your other suggestions, I was able to use Go To Folder to get to the /private folder, and I saw that it said I could only read. I was able to add my user account and give it Read/Write permission through the Get Info dialogue box (I fear Terminal unless I have explicit instructions). Is this what I want? I also looked into the /volumes folder and apparently there is nothing within it, unless the folders are hidden I suppose. I checked permissions of my main drive (startup disk, on which all my applications reside) and they claim that I have read/write privileges. However I'm only viewing this in the Get Info box; is that not the right place to see/alter it? Because this whole time the scratch partition also claimed that I have read/write permissions and that was obviously not true, as it only started working right once I checked "Ignore Ownership on this Volume". But it's incredibly confusing because I could save files to the scratch drive from Photoshop; I just couldn't choose it as a scratch drive.
The short question is: is it ok that I simply chose to ignore ownership on these disks, and that I messed with the /private folder, and/or do I need to do anything else?

How can i make my external hard drive be the scratch disk with 1 FW input?!

Hello! I use firewire with my external HD AND my camera...however i only have one firewire input...i set my scratch disk for final cut to work with my external HD but when i am importing footage to my computer with my camcorder, i can not have my external HD plugged in, thus the scratch disk has to be set to something else to continue working. So how can i work around this problem?! Should i just change the settings back after i import the footage and it all goes to place?

I don't understand the need to daisy chain. I have one Firewire port on my MacBook Pro, and I use a Firewire hub. I've been connecting two 1TB Western Digital My Book Studio Edition hard drives (one for FCE and iMovie projects; one for the media files I create via export), and a Canon NTSC ZR200 miniDV tape camcorder, or a Sony Digital8 tape camcorder, or sometimes a Canopus ADVC 110, without issues. Why not use a Firewire hub? . . . except to save the small expense.

Is there a way to default scratch disks in system settings?

This might be elementary, but is there a way to default the scratch disks in system settings to match the project that you are currently working on?
What I mean is when I switch from project to project my auto save files get all jumbled up.. then when I really needed to retrieve one I had to search them out in folders from different projects.... it was a mess
So as I have it now.. I have to open a project then go to system settings and switch all my scratch disks accordingly.. but I always forget to do this not to mention that it is a pain in the *** and time consuming..
Thanks in advance if you can help

I just create one master file for all my FCP projects inside it there is the autosave folder, thumbnail and waveforme cache folders.. then inside each one FCP automatically creates a seperate folder with your projects name.. so you can find them easily

Where am I able to find my CS5 scratch disk?

When I open a "new" project to create a logo, or whatever, It tells me that I am unable to do so cause my scratch disk is full. As well, it will NOT allow me to specify a back up scratch on my external hard drive for whatever reason (probably cause it's USB 2.0), it doesn't even show as being listed when I go to choose the scratch. Anyfrickingways, at this point, I'm just fed up, so what I'm wondering is this... Where and how can I find my scratch disk so that I can delete some files? I'm a newb, so any advice would be sincerely appreciated. Thank you.
D-Bag.

D-Bag, the default scratch disk is the drive that your OS is on.

Setting up RAID 0 and scratch disk from blank drives?

Folks,
Howdy again from NC. I've been setting up an AMD Phenom II 955 to handle PPro CS5 as well as possible, within limits. I built four of these machines for my math class, and am going to give CS5 a go on one of them before caving in and migrating my Production Premium to an i7/X58 platform. Maybe I'll get lucky and find this computer works acceptably with PPro, especially if I transcode my T2i AVCHD footage (likely Neoscene).
I put three new disks into my build yesterday and would like some pointers on setting them up, if I may ask. I have read through a number of posts on this, but don't find direct answers, unfortunately. I've never set up a RAID and want to get it right.
I have two Caviar Black drives for my RAID and a Hitachi Deskstar for my scratch disk. The Blacks are new out of the pack and the Hitachi has had zeros written to the drive. How to begin?
Anticipated issues:
* Do I need to format the drives in a certain way? I had planned on going into Disk Management and setting up a volume on each as my first move. Right now, they aren't even recognized under My Computer. Under Disk Management, all three show as unallocated.
From memory, I right click in the unallocated space and select an option for setting up the volume. Prior to this I only used straight-up drives, no RAID, and after writing zeros to a drive selected "New Simple Volume". It seems to me this is the move to make on the single scratch disk.
But how about the two RAIDed drives? We also have options to set up as "New Striped Volume" or "New Spanned Volume". If the answer is to set as as "New Striped Volume" for the RAID 0 I have planned, do I do this before or after installing the RAID software?
* My documentation for setting up the RAID on my motherboard doesn't indicate when to change my BIOS setting for the two SATA channels from IDE to RAID. Should I do this before or after running the software to set up the RAID? Do I need to go into the software setup with the two SATA channels already configured as RAID?
Right now, all SATA channels are configured as IDE.
* After getting my disks set up, I'd like to optimize my system for editing (turning off unwanted features, etc.). I've been looking all over for a link to an outside site I had bookmarked from a prior post, but lost it on re-install. Anyone recall what the favored link was? It started as a long page of instructions in simple typeface.
In the end, my disks are as follows (unless someone makes a case to use them differently):
OS/Programs - 1TB Caviar Green. Yes, I know the deal on green drives, but I needed to use this drive somewhere. I figured using it as the OS drive would be the best spot for the slowest drive. Maybe I botched this and should have used the following drive for the OS? I had transfer rates in mind and thought the Scratch drive should be faster?
Scratch - 750GB Deskstar 7K100 series. This drive was tops 18 months back when I bought it.
RAID 0 - Two 640GB Caviar Blacks (32 meg cache, twin processors). A bit older in the Black lineup, but the drive charts show them working quickly.
To ask one dumb last question, which will really show my newbieness, I use the scratch drive for page files (right? and what else?) and the RAID for holding any media to be worked upon and for encoding the final project?
I've been reading on this forum for over a month and am amazed that as I have the drives for a RAID, I can't find good links to tell me what to do. I know I am asking redundant questions here but have already spent two hours with the search engine and am only getting tangential anwers (ha! math joke).
Sorry to be asking such newbie questions all over again, but my luck with the search engine hasn't been so good of late. Maybe Bill's idea of creating a sticky section for common questions is a good idea.

about 75-80% of the systems we ship, ship with this config (others would be bigger arrays or no array)
1)OS
2) project drive 2 x raid 0
3) render to/export drive 2 x raid 0
4) back up (pick your poison)
while i cant speak to the older WDs (we have not used them for 3-4 yrs until now)
i can tell you with Seagate and now WD we have not seen the issue that applies to this inRaid 0
we are aware of the timeout issue this happens with controller cards and seagate or WD with large raid 5/6
simple answer use enterprise drives for raid 5/6
if you look at all the external raid resellers Sonnet etc they all use enterprise drives (mostly seagate)
so do we for large raids.
(drobo does not so buyer beware (green), we like to sell drobo without drives in it and use ours)
again BACK UP do not assume your raid 3/5/6/10/1 whatever is bullet proof, trust me its not
so even if you have a loss it should be at best nominal
something i dont think i have seen mentioned enough either
the single most common cause of drive failure (or any component failure) is Dirty Power!
dirty power can be spikes but are usually brown outs (very common in large older cities) or even low voltage coming into the home/office
this is the most common.
rather than a clean 120v you could see it as low as 105v
the other is being on a circuit with a large appliance.
ever see your lilghts flicker when the AC kicks on?
buy a good inline filter UPS. add 20% MORE wattage than your power supply
dont forget to add accessories LCDs, Audio interfaces, speakers/studio monitors etc.
Scott
ADK

Adobe Photoshop Scratch Disk Full/Startup Disk Full error - PLEASE HELP

Dear ALL,
I have started to notice recently that when I run Photoshop CS on my Mac OSX Tiger, I am getting the Startup Disk Full error message. Never happended before.
Since my initial post I downloaded Macaroni (utility) and have run the daily/weekly/monthly backups, checked the /private/var/vm and /private/var/log and /Volumes. Nothing unusual there...
When I started getting this error I had 32GB left on a looked at my HD and I seem to have 32GB available on a 152GB drive. Now after deleting I have 76GB capacity left.
But when I tried to open a Photoshop PSD or TIFF file and do a crop I still get tge Startup Disk is Full error followed by the Adobe Photoshop error Scratch Disk is Full.
I am thinking of running the Disk Utility from the Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and doing a Verify Disk and Verify Disk Permissions followed by Repair Disk Permissions. I will be logged into the machine whilst doing this. Is there any danger in this as I have read elsewhere that I need to do this from a bootable volume. If that is the case how do I create a bootable disk/cd? If not then what is the cure to my Disk Full as surely there is now nearly 50% FREE!!!!!
Please help.
Max

PS will always use the boot disk for scratch to some extent even with an alternate primary scratch disk.
Be sure to turn off Spotlight as it causes problems.
4GB of RAM would be nice, I understand small files don't work well if there is more than 4GB RAM but large files will. OS X uses free RAM as cache and RAM disk before using disk drives.
How much RAM is allocated to PS? More RAM would help.
A dedicated lean boot drive helps. Install just what is needed for your work, use a separate drive for data, and yet another RAID volume for scratch.
When in doubt, backup with SuperDuper, and do an erase and then restore. Always backup before repairing; and never, ever, use an old version of Tiger CD/DVD - like 10.4.2 on 10.4.7/.8. Use "fsck" instead, or your emergency boot drive.
Also, give Applejack a shot and delete the cache folders and swap files from time to time to keep a system humming. CS/CS2 and Tiger benefit nicely from more RAM.

How do I prevent Premiere from placing the scratch disk onto the 'same as project" folder

I start a project by resetting the default scratch disc settings from “same as project” (which is on my “G” drive) to another hard drive where I have always stored defaults on CS3 (the “D” drive). I never had to redo my scratch disks when I created a new project in CS3. Now I need to redo them every time. If I open an older project in CS5 it automatically places all scratch disk files onto the G drive. How do I prevent Premiere from placing all scratch disk information onto the G drive before I open an older file? By the time I get around to changing the location, Premiere has already begun saving scratch disk information on the wrong disk.
However I have another related problem. When I import an older project to nest it in a new project, the scratch discs mysteriously change back from the D drive where I set it up to the “G” drive. I finally discovered this when I reopen the project and all previews disappeared and it had defaulted back to the G drive.

Thanks. Now I know that anytime I import a CS3 project file into a CS5 project, that it will change the whole project scratch disk settings to the default without warning.
One wouldn’t think that just one imported file would change the whole overall project file (out of many imported files…not project files that do not); it is odd that Premiere changes the setting of the new overall Cs5 project without warning.

Where is the scratch disk for Garageband ?

Hi there,
1) Can I know when we record vocals in garageband, where does the recorded file copied to ? What is the path of the scratch disk ?
2) If I copy my project files in my macbook pro to my iMac, how does iMac locate all the recordings that I done in the macbook pro ?
Thanks

HangTime wrote:
http://www.bulletsandbones.com/GB/GBFAQ.html#recordingsstored
(Let the page FULLY load. The link to your answer is at the top of your screen)
Thanks HangTime,
It says:
+"A. The recordings that you make are stored within the project that you created. It is recommended that you do not mess with the project package (and if you don't know what an OS X package is, or how to open one, it's even MORE strongly recommended that you do not mess with it)"+
what does +stored within project+ means ? so where is the file ?
don't i have to copy them when I want to use a project file from macbook pro to iMac ?
thks

Canon camcorder + scratch disk questions

I have a Canon Optura 50 (I now know that was not the best choice!). But, given what I have and I can't buy a new camcorder for a while, I would like some advice and clarification.
I have been following the thread on dropped frames and the do's and don'ts of internal vs external hard drives (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?forumID=936&threadID=680582). The consensus seems to be that (a) it is not a good idea to use the internal drive as the scratch disc, and (b) best to use an external FW drive and daisy chain the camera to FW drive to computer.
With the Canon I take it I cannot daisy chain it due to it's FW hardware quirks of not liking anything else on the FW bus at the same time as video capture, correct?
Am I going to run into major problems with my internal drive, since I use it as the scratch disk? I capture to the internal, and then move all the files to the external for editing in FCE.
Is there anything else I should know or do? I have created several projects in FCE, with success. I am slowly learning more as I go, and this forum has been a great help.
Lisa
iMac 20" Intel Core Duo 2Ghz 1.5gb RAM Mac OS X (10.4.7) FCE 3.5; Seagate 250 GB FW external

With the Canon I take it I cannot daisy chain it due to it's FW hardware quirks of not liking anything else on the FW bus at the same time as video capture, correct?
I have my Canon daisy chained through my external HD with no problems. Ever. So I am forced to believe either I have been blessed with enternal luck (knock on woodcrest) or convince myself the consensus that there is a specific problem with Canon cameras being daisy-chained has been the direct effect of pure coincidence and speculation. One will truly never know if a specific set-up will work until they try it out for themselves so go ahead and daisy chain that Canon away and see if you have problems.
And as far as using an external disk as your HD goes...
If you have the FC Express User Maual, take a look at Chapter 12 titled "Determining Your Hard Disk Storage Options" starting on page 153. If you don't have the manual feel free to check it out online here on Apple's website. Be aware it's a 26.5 MB link so it might take awhile to load but I'll highlight the juicy stuff for ya:
The manual states:
"By default, Final Cut Express HD uses the hard disk on which the application is installed
as your scratch disk to store captured and render files. Ideally, you should use a hard
disk other than your main system disk as your scratch disk."
It goes on to mention:
"The data rate of the video you capture depends on the format of the source video and
the codec you use for capture. The data rate for DV and HDV is 3.6 MB/sec.: Whatever
disk drive technology you decide to use, your storage disk’s sustained transfer speed
must be fast enough to keep up with the data rate."
The MBP can have a 7200 drive installed in it and that's not really the point. The point is it's just not reasonable to think that ONE HD, even if it's a 10,000 Raptor, can read the information to run the Operating System, Application, AND read your video/audio data all at once without expecting hiccups. You need your System drive to run your OS and Apps. and your seperate Scratch Disk for your Media (not a partition of your System Drive). Simple as that.
Not saying the other way isn't possible, it's just not recommended. If Apple doesn't recommend it then I won't regardless of status.

Creating a scratch disk

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