Lacie Firewire external HD as Photoshop scratch disk

Hi, I bought a 250Gb Lacie External HD to backup my iBook stuff, and was planning on using it as Photoshop CS2 scratch disk.
The problem is that on menu Photoshop>Preferences>Plugins&Scratch Disks there's no option to choose the Lacie HD, only Startup and Macintosh HD, that are the same HD by the way...
I can actually open, save and do whatever I want on the Lacie HD, the only problem is that Photoshop doesn't think it deserves to be a scratch disk.
Any advice?

Hi, Stephen. I suspect that what Apple System Profiler is seeing (and telling you about) is the FireWire bridge chipset in the enternal enclosure, which obviously must be capable of FW800 since it has a FW800 port. ASP isn't telling you how the drive is actually connected, but what sort of bridge chipset it's detecting. The chipsets are different for FW 400 and FW800, but I imagine the FW800 chipset is backward-compatible, and so there's no FW400 chipset for ASP to detect and report.
Since the chipset is there and recognized by ASP, I presume that the problem you're having may be related to the drive mechanism itself. Not being familiar with the drive in question, I don't know what the blue light you speak of is supposed to signify. Can you hear the drive spin up when you turn it on? Does Disk Utility see it? And if so, does its Repair Disk routine report any unfixable problems, or can't you run it at all?

Similar Messages

10.4.5 Update Causing Error -36 with LaCie Firewire External Hard drives

I have two LaCie Firewire external drives, one for extra storage and one for backups. Since the 10.4.5 update, I've been unable to copy files consistently from my external drives to my hard drive or other external drives. The disks mount, and run like normal - I have my iTunes library on one drive, and all the tracks play normally. I am able to copy very small files, but anything over a couple mb gives me an error -36. I've run disk utilities etc on the external drives and they appear to be just fine. In order to see if it's an OS problem, I hooked the external drives (in a daisy chain) to my girlfriend's ibook. She's running Jaguar still, and had no problems. So it appears that it's an OS upgrade problem. One note, I didn't disconnect the drives when I ran the upgrade, but then, I never have for upgrades, only full OS installs. Is anyone else having this problem and know of any fixes?

Libby,
Backup is unable to make a restorable by Disk Utility backup. You can restore pieces of the software as outlined in my FAQ about backing up user data:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
But to be able to restore a backup with Disk Utility, you need a cloning utility to have made the backup.
I suggest starting a new thread here, where someone else could help you out better:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=752&start=0
First off, you'll get a wider audience who may be able to solve your problem. Secondly, responses to you won't confuse the original poster with solutions that don't apply to them. And thirdly, you'll know for certain whether or not a response applies to you.

Photoshop scratch disk

Hi All,
I have photoshop CS2 on my desktop computer (XP). The hard drive is partitioned and I have photoshop scratch disk on its own partition (10GB).
I have photoshop CS3 on my laptop (Vista Premium, 2GB ram). There is only one hard drive in the laptop. It is already partitioned into three - C drive: windows + programs, S drive: system files, X drive: recovery.
My question is do I keep my scratch drive on the C drive or can/should I partition an external hard drive (250GB) and put my photoshop scratch disk on there? The external drive is via USB.
Thanks in advance.

Hi Dave & everyone,
Update on my external scratch drive.
When I bought the drive I ran all the way home with my new toy and quickly plugged it in to the notebook. Vista recognised it and I immediately transferred over 150GB of backup copies of my pics that I had burned to DVD's....I then read the instructions.
The drive was formatted as FAT32 and of course Vista is NTFS.
I promised myself that I would reformat it someday.
Today I burned my stuff to DVD's and formatted the drive as NTFS. I then partitioned it as a 200+GB (D)drive and a 34GB (F)scratch drive.
I ran DiskTT to see if there were any difference in the speed compared to what I wrote in message #17.
Here is the result.
Internal drive (C):
sequential write: 3036MB in 124.35sec = 24.4MB per second
sequential read: 3036MB in 95.57sec = 31.8MB per second
random access: 3036MB in 0.95sec = 3189.1MB per second
External drive (F):
sequential write: 3036MB in 173.49sec = 17.5MB per second
sequential read: 3036MB in 134.40sec = 22.6MB per second
random access: 3036MB in 0.97sec = 3136.4MB per second
bear in mind that the packet it wrote/read (3036MB) is less than the previous test (3563MB/3663MB)
Any thoughts?

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?

Photoshop Scratch Disk Error OSX Lion 10.7.3

I have had Photoshop CS5 installed on my system for over a year, and it worked fine all this time under Snow Leopard. Now that I've upgraded to Lion, Photoshop will not open due to these messages:
Could not open a scratch file because the disk is unavailable.
Could not initialize Photoshop because the disk is unavailable.
The scratch disk in question is an 80gb partition of a 1tb internal hard drive. If I delete the preferences file (by holding down cmd-shift-opt when starting PS) then it starts up just fine. If I go into preferences and reset it to use the scratch disk, then next time I try to reopen the program I get the same 2 error messages and I have to ditch the preferences again.
There is nothing wrong with the disks, I verified them. And anyway, I've been using that scratch disk with Photoshop for the last year with no issues. It was only after I switched to Lion that this started happening.
I need to be able to take advantage of the performance increase that a scratch disk offers. Anybody have any ideas on what's happening or how to solve this?

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?

EMac and FCE using an external firewire hard drive as a Scratch Disk

I am about to purchase a new hard drive for use with FCE as a scratch disc.
I am looking for people who are "actually" using an external firewire hard drive as a scratch disc with FCE on an eMac.
I am interested in the following info.
1. What Make, Model, size HD are you using?
2. What rpm speed and cache size?
3. Any problems? Crashed HD's? Working good?
4. Do you have any other firewire devices plugged into your eMac?
I blew up 3 eMacs last year. Apple could not figure it out or anyone else.
I was using a Lacie P3 250/8mb firewire drive as a scratch disc.
Thanks in advance.
eMac 1.25ghz/1gb RAM/160gb HD/Superdrive Mac OS X (10.3.9)

1. What Make, Model, size HD are you using?
I have two LaCie Porsche drives, one 160 GB and another 250 GB (more like 159 GB and 233 GB in actuality).
2. What rpm speed and cache size?
They're both 5400 RPM if memory serves me. The 160 drive has 2 MB cache and the 250 has 8 MB cache.
3. Any problems? Crashed HD's? Working good?
The 160 GB drive caused me some problems, but I'm chalking most of that up to a bad FireWire cable. LaCie replaced the cable for free, and I haven't had any significant problems.
4. Do you have any other firewire devices plugged into your eMac?
Since I've got a 15" PowerBook, I'm limited to 1 Firewire bus, so the two drives, a LaCie DVD burner, and my Sony Handicam are all daisy-chained together. Having the Handicam on the bus tends to slow things down, but I can certainly capture to the drives with no problems. If I'm doing a lot of editing, though, I'll unplug the camera to speed up the bus.
I use the 160 GB drive primarily for backup, storing finished projects, and storing stock footage. The 250 GB drive is used solely for video capture and render.
The only thing I might caution you with is that the LaCie Porsche drives are rather picky about how they get turned on and plugged into the FireWire bus. You need to plug the power in, turn them on, and THEN plug in FireWire -- it won't work if you have FireWire plugged in when you turn them on. It's not a big issue, as long as you're aware of it. (It could be that my PowerBook is a little wonky, too.)

Photoshop scratch disk question

Hi All,
I do a lot of work with photoshop elements, and currently have an external drive with a 2GB partion as my scratch disk - connected via firewire.
However I am beginning to find this set up a little annoying as it means I am stuck to one location unable to move when using photoshop.
I was thinking about partioning the internal hard drive on my PB instead and so having the scratch disk available wherever and also the transfer speed would be by the Gb instead of 400Mb. (am I right?)
Is it a good idea to partion a hard drive on a portable? is it worth all the hassle of reinstalling and also has anyone had any problems after partioning? like battery life decreasing?
Thanks in advance,
Naj

you seem have to put this question in the software session but fine. well, actually, you don't need to specifically partition you drive for photoshop and just let it choose your start-up disk or other connected drive you choose. but, for external drive, you have to connect while you start up you system. if not, your ps will always switch back to your start-up disk when you start your ps.

Question about Photoshop scratch disk and specific setup

Hi Folks
Thanks for the help in advance.
I'm a novice and need help finding a solution to a new PC Build. (Windows 7 Pro 64bit with Photoshop CS6)
I only recently found out about having a scratch disk dedicated for photoshop (very novice i know ), and was wondering if a 120-128GB SSD would be enough? (Please bear in mind I can't fit large SSD raid configs to my budget, plus I live in New Zealand, so prices are higher for SSD at the moment).
I only edit single camera RAW files at a time around 25mb per file, with no large amount of layers and very rarely do large images i.e. Panorama etc. I have searched the forums but could not find a concrete answer.
My setup was originally meant for a HTPC (I don't intend to overclock), but I will also be using it for light photography projects. Specs below:
CPU: Intel i7 3770
Mobo: Asrock B75 Pro3-M (or Asus P8H77m Pro, depending on budget)
16gb Ram (maybe bump up to 32gb later)
120-128gb SSD for OS and apps
120-128gb SSD scratch disk
2 TB HDD for storage
If anyone knows, the motherboards I've listed have 3x Sata3 ports, Asrock has one Intel chip and two Asmedia controlled Sata3 ports, while Asus has 2x Intel controlled and 1x Marvell controlled Sata3 port. If I went with the Asrock, would it be okay to connect the OS/Apps SSD to the intel controlled sata3 port and have the scratch disk and storage HDD to the Asmedia sata3 ports?
And one more novice question, when I begin to edit my images, is it best to transfer my photos from memory card to storage HDD then work from there? Or would it be quicker opening images direct from a USB 3.0 card reader / USB 3.0 external hard drive?
Thanks again everyone, really appreciate it

priddye wrote:
Just to clarify, if/when I get one 256gb SSD for my main C: drive, I can load the OS/Apps and store some data for the time being (until I get another SSD) and use the 2TB HDD for scratch disk only?
Yes, that's what I meant. You could try putting Photoshop scratch on C: at least temporarily, and watch your free space carefully. If you don't work on big documents or set your history states to be very large, it might be workable. But be careful. The safe "set it and forget it" configuration is to make your HDD the one and only Photoshop scratch drive.
When I do get around to getting the second 256gb, I will look at installing the two SSD's in RAID configuration. If i were to do this, can I load the OS/Apps to the RAID SSD's as well as using them for scratch disks and have the 2TB HDD for storage? I hope that makes sense.
Sounds about right; with 512GB on tap you should be able to run just about everything from C:, as long as you don't keep your entire photo library on there. Realistically, on a big system that's got a lot of apps installed and has been used for some time, Windows and your apps may end up consuming 100 to 150 GB, so that would still leave you a lot of breathing room.
Keep in mind that what you describe may require 3rd party re-partitioning software and/or backup and restoral, or a complete reinstallation of Windows and everything (usually the latter is what is recommended when moving up to a RAID system volume).
By the way, SSDs stay in best working order if you overprovision - i.e., maintain a fair amount of free space. The internal controllers need the free space to keep the data organized well and maintain top performance.
-Noel

Mail application, Silverkeeper and Lacie Firewire external drive

I have the following set-up:
G5 PPC iMac
OS X (10.4.11)
Lacie Firewire 250Gb external hard disk
Silverkeeper 1.1.4
I have used this software many times and it has worked perfectly, flawlessly even, EXCEPT for one issue.
When I am at home I back up my Mac HD regularly to the Lacie. I also always do this just before I travel.
When I travel, I take the Lacie HD (and cables) with me, connect it to whatever PPC Mac is available, select the Lacie drive as my start-up disk, and then use it as if it were my G5 at home.
When I return home, I reconnect the Lacie to the G5 and back-up from the G5 (Source) to the Lacie (Destination) using Silverkeeper with the following option selected:
Preferences/Backup Actions/IF A FILE HAS A NEWER DATE ON THE DESTINATION COPY TO SOURCE
However, the selection of this option fails to copy any of the e-mail I have sent or received using the (Mac) Mail application from the Lacie drive to the G5. For each e-mail I have sent or received, I get this:
+The message from XXX <[email protected]> concerning “RE: ZZZ” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download i+t.
This message is in the right e-mail box, but there is no header or field information of any kind, never mind any text in the body of the message.
I have no idea what this message means. The Mail application on my G5 iMac (and its 'mirror' on the Lacie drive) is set up to retrieve and send mail through POP and SMTP accounts and does not work with webmail. Furthermore, the Mail application checks for and sends e-mail automatically at fixed pre-programmed intervals according to its configuration.
What therefore does '..+.has not been downloaded from the serv+er.' mean. What server?
And what does '+You need to take this account online in order to download it+.' mean? I have to be on-line in order to send and receive e-mail in the first place, and the Mail application works perfectly when running on the Lacie drive. The e-mails all APPEARED in their correct mailboxes in Mail on the Lacie drive. Silverkeeper simply fails to back up sent and received e-mails from the Lacie drive to the G5 HD. Also, if I now (after having copied from source to destination as above) make the Lacie drive the start-up disk, the e-mails sent and received on my travels are no longer in their mailboxes, but have instead been replaced with the messages identical to that in italics given above.
Any help in solving this would be hugely appreciated. I have already lost quite a few e-mails and hope not to lose more.
Many thanks.
I appreciate that it is possible to configure the Mail app. to leave e-mails on the server for a month after first downloading them to Mail, or to remove them from the server only when they are removed from the Inbox, but I suspect that would drive me mad. Also I have rules and filters set up to send the incoming mails to customised mailboxes that are not in the Inbox, so that second option might equate to immediate removal from the server.

Seems Silver Keeper no longer keeps up, let me sugest..
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup4...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.html

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.

Serial ata 133 vs ata 66 vs lacie firewire external d2 drive speed issues

I have an older power mac tower that has built in ata 66. I have a large music collection (300 gigs) that resides in a lacie firewire (D2) external drive. When I make a play list, itunes makes me wait about 20 seconds to create the playlist which drives me crazy (spinning beachball). I also use the computer for logic pro.
I want to increase the internal capacity of this computer. I am wondering....is the external firewire drive faster than what an ata 133, 7200 rpm internal drive would be. Secondly, is ata 133 really that much faster than ata 66. Thirdly, does anyone know if drive speed has anything to do with the itunes sluggishness?
Any suggestions?
power mac g4 dual 450 Mac OS X (10.4.1)

Wow. I was thinking of posting a similar question myself. I have a G3 as a hardware router (for filtering) and I was wondering how to speed it up.
The research I've done so far has yielded these tidbits:
1) ATA 133 isn't much faster than ATA 66 for a single drive. Why? Most drives don't transfer data quickly enough to use the whole 66 Mb/sec bandwidth of ATA 66 anyways. The newest drives that have burst speeds above 66 Mbs could make a difference, but burst speeds are rarely achieved. I've been looking and I've found lots of ATA 100 drives, but no ATA 133 drives. You'd have to get a 10k Raptor or a RAID setup to see an appreciable difference from ATA 66 to ATA 133.
2) The upper speed limit of FW 400 is 50 Mb/sec. However, the data goes through the FW bridge, which then gets fed to the native IDE drive on the other side. This takes time. External FW drives of the same RPM and protocol (ATA 33, etc) are slightly slower than their internal brethren.
HTH,
~FifthWheel

LaCie FireWire External Hard Drive NOT working ...

I have a 250GB LaCie External Hard Drive plugged via FireWire into my Desktop and it is NOT working properly for the last 12-14 months. I have tried several things, including taking it to the store, and nothing seems to fix the problem. I even upgraded the RAM to 1.25 GB, but that did not solve this problem (I never thought this was the problem, but the guy at the Genius Bar suggested so). The most frustrating of all is that sometimes it works (20% of the time) and most of the time it is just not working. Also, when I use it with my MacBook, it works just fine, so this gives me a little bit of a clue that the problem is the desktop, not the Hard Drive, this is why I did not buy a new HDrive, and this is why I am asking help here. (By the way, when I try to eject the LaCie from my Desktop, it says it can't be done because the disk is in use -which I know is not)
Here is the thing as today. Last week I was able to drag some music from my iTunes to my HD using my MacBook. I connected my LaCie back to my desktop (which is where I need it to be) and I can NOT copy any file from my desktop to my LaCie Hardrive. It gives an error message like "The name is too long for the destination". Really weird! If I change the name it still says the same. So when I want to save a CD to my LaCie (which is the main purpose of me having an External Hard Drive, I just can't do it).
When I try to open files from the LaCie, it is fine as long as it is a jpeg or a .doc file. MP3 files won't open, and an error will show like this: Disk could not be read from or written to. I can drag files from LaCie to my dektop, but again, only .doc or .jpeg files.
In regards to the Time Machine, I completely gave that up. It would not back up, it would freeze the computer ... I really don't care about that, really. All I want is my External Hard Drive to be able to save my mp3 files safely, since I have thousands of files in mp3 format.
I tried to use Disk Utility to verify and/or repair de disk, but I was not successful with that either. When repairing, after not even a minute it says "Disk could not be unmounted". When trying to verify, it would say "Filesystem verify or repair failed".
I am DESPERATELY asking for help. I am just a regular guy with few computer knowledge. I just want my Apple to work, that is why I use Apple and not PC. But I need someone who could give me advice on how to fix this problem.
Thank YOU very much!

{quote}
My desktop has two FireWire ports. In the first one I had my webcam plugged in. In the second one, the External Hard Drive. I unplugged the camera and used the first port for my External HDrive and now it works! So it seems the problem is a hardware problem with the port.
I'd check to see if the problem returns when you plug the camera back into the second port, or if the drive works in the original port when the camera is not connected.
Edit: Maybe you unplugged the problem, when you unplugged the camera?
Message was edited by: dechamp

Photoshop external scratch disk to improve performances?

Hi
I have performances issues with Photoshop CS2 (and with LightRoom) on a 2.16GHz Intel iMac (45GB free disk space). This is perhaps due in part to the Rosetta engine. Small files are OK to work with, but when it comes to several hundred MB files, everything slows down. There are already 3 GB of Ram installed. I wonder if using an external (FW-800?) scratch disk could improve the performances? (What about a fast USB stick? Silly?) Or would I see a big change if I upgraded to an Intel written version of Photoshop? Thanks!
Paul

George,
I do not believe that having a second partition will reserve any particular area of the drive so partitioning the drive may not buy you much
Years ago there was this utility: FWB Harddisk Toolkit, which could set a scratch volume on the faster tracks of the drive. This was more needed at the time due to small size drives (9 Gb was huge!) and lower input/output. Nowadays, the processors, drives, memory and busses are blazing fast, but the resources needed to operate the OS and programs are way bigger too, and so are the digital camera files... One day shoot can easily reach 16 Gb of RAW files.
The idea is to keep your files stored on the external like you are doing but have the immediate files you are working on saved and opened from your desktop. Once you are finished working on it, copy it to the external then delete from desktop. If this is not going to work well for you the next best thing would be to get a FireWire 800 drive. The read/write speeds will be double that of the USB external.
Years ago I would spend $800 or more for a 500 Gb FW-800 drive for there was no other choice, but now when you need another 1Tb drive every 6 months or so, the FW-800 are still relatively expensive and the USB-2 very cheap! ... And so is the iMac in comparison to a MacPro! I suppose that I get what I pay for.
Thanks!
Paul

I am getting a Photoshop CC "scratch disk full" error, but my scratch disk is C:/ and I have 40 gigs of free space - help!?!

Why is Photoshop giving me this error when I'm not working on files that are that big given the amount of free space on my computer? They're around 1.5 megs each, .jpeg files (not even PSD files) and I'm only trying to resize them to smaller, nothing fancy at all. Can't even open and do one without getting the scratch disk full error - but it's not full when I look at my C:/ drive (even in PS when I check the scratch disks under Preferences you can see the multiple gigs free).
Help anyone?
Thanks!
C

The rule of thumb I follow to figure out scratch space says to figure on 50 to 100 times the size of your largest file ever multiplied by the number of files you have open. I have seen the scratch file exceed 800 GB once, an admittedly rare occurrence, but it often exceeds 200 GB when stitching large panoramas and the like.
As an example—and stressing that I'm aware that others have even more scratch space than I do—I keep two dedicated, physically separate hard drives as my primary and secondary Photoshop scratch disks and a lot of GB free on my boot drive for the OS. I also have 16 GB of RAM installed.
Additionally, if you only have a single HD, i.e. your boot drive, you'd need it to be large enough to accommodate both the swap files of the OS as well as Photoshop's scratch.

Why photoshop shows "scratch disk full" error, while in preferences I see that my extra harddrive with free disk space of 216GB is active?

"Could not update smart object files because the scratch disks are full". Please help, I though I connected my huge drive to photoshop?

The rule of thumb I follow to figure out scratch space says to figure on 50 to 100 times the size of your largest file ever multiplied by the number of files you have open. I have seen the scratch file exceed 800 GB once, an admittedly rare occurrence, but it often exceeds 200 GB when stitching large panoramas and the like.
As an example—and stressing that I'm aware that others have even more scratch space than I do—I keep two dedicated, physically separate hard drives as my primary and secondary Photoshop scratch disks and a lot of GB free on my boot drive for the OS. I also have 16 GB of RAM installed.
Additionally, if you only have a single HD, i.e. your boot drive, you'd need it to be large enough to accommodate both the swap files of the OS as well as Photoshop's scratch.

Lacie Firewire external HD as Photoshop scratch disk

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