Photoshop scratch disc (SSD), thunderbolt or USB3.0?

asking the adobe team photoshop engineers, if there is one?
which kind of scratch disc are you using? i think you must know it
i would like to know whether the difference of usb3.0 to thunderbolt is marginally or not?
reading that there is a difference between using the boot disc as scratch disc and using a dedicated separate disc,
i think using the boot disc as scratch is not a good decision, as it is used by the system already, although it would be very fast (700MB/s)
i am professionally working with photoshop cs6 under medium to high demands:
16bit .psb layer files, document size 20x40inch, 300dpi, RGB - my average filesize is 10 - 20 GB per .psb layer file.
currently using an external usb3 500GB SSD (crucial m500) as a photoshop cs6 scratch disc,
under 10.9.1, in the moment i am using an imac 27" late 2013 with internal PCI-e SSD (700MB/sec)
and 32GB RAM. my info panel says, that 32GB RAM is not enough and the scratch disc is active, (50GB is needed, 32GB is available)
calculating scratch disc size: 20 x 100 = 200GB as needed to scratch, the 500GB SSD is a lot more than i need, actually?
in mid 2014 i want to buy the new mac pro with 64GB RAM, also would need a dedicated scratch disc,
as i heard that photoshop is constantly using the scratch disc, also, if it doesnt need it.
it writes the whole image onto the disc, when opened.
my concern is:
USB 3.0 is not built as a pure data connection (as thunderbolt is), it has a weak read/write sustained throughput, as i heard.
as conclusion: must i use an external thunderbolt SSD as photoshop scratch disc to prevent lag and performance drops compared to usb 3.0 or is the difference marginally?
thanks!

For optimal performance in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS5 (I will soon upgrade to CS6 or CC), how should I distribute my OS, apps, Scratch, Caches, DNGs, and working TIFFs among these drives?:
120 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
240 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
960 GB OWC Mercury Accelsior SSD
(connected by Thunderbolt TB1 OWC Helios unit)
Also, probably irrelevant: multiple individual hard drives connected via eSATA and USB3, not RAIDed together
The Accelsior SSD, connected by TB1, is by far the fastest drive. Would partitioning and devoting different parts of it to different functions help?
I'm able to fit the OS, apps, email, etc. on the 120 GB SSD. But I don't assume that I should.
Here's the most relevent info about the rest of my hardware:
Hardware Overview:
Model Name:   iMac
Model Identifier:   iMac12,2
Processor Name:   Intel Core i7
Processor Speed:   3.4 GHz
Number of Processors:   1
Total Number of Cores:   4
L2 Cache (per Core):   256 KB
L3 Cache:   8 MB
Memory:   32 GB
Boot ROM Version:   IM121.0047.B1F
SMC Version (system):   1.72f2
Many thanks,
Mark

Similar Messages

How to determine the scratch disc size?

hello,
once i was reading an adobe pdf "How to get better performance in photoshop cs5" - that was in 2009 or 2010, and may be outdated, but there was a calculation method
to determine the size of a scratch disc. (similar calculation see below, if i can remember right)
i am asking myself, how can i determine the correct size of an external SSD-scratch disc, only used by photoshop (completely empty):
should i buy a 128GB or 256GB or 512GB SSD which is only reserved for photoshop?
basic question 1 : i guess i should avoid to set the internal SSD as photoshop scratch disc, as it slows down everything?
basic question 2 : in sense of maximum performance: better buy an external USB3.0 or thunderbolt SSD? will photoshop really use the extra thunderbolt speed when swapping data?
secondary question:
can i calculate the size regarding my daily working habits?
i am mainly working like this:
- with my imac 27" late 2013 with 32GB RAM and 256 GB internal pci-e SSD (800 MB/sec), which will stay always half empty for performance reasons.
- OSX 10.8 mountain lion and 10.9 mavericks soon
- photoshop cs5, cs6 and cc (always without extended)
- 8bit and 16bit mode
- only RGB
- with latest phocus/Hasselblad and canon RAW Files which produce a basic .psb document at ...
- 10.000 x 7000 px at 300dpi
- with average 10 - 40 main image layers and 20-50 adjustement layers (try to reduce that in 16bit)
- .psb file is 2-20 GB big (file in finder)
- 16bit file compression is off, when saving .psb files (faster handling)
- set photoshop to 70% ram usage (from 32GB RAM)
i wonder how to calculate ?
for example:
10.000 x 7000 px at 300dpi needs for one image layer at 16bit: 2GB RAM in photoshop cs6 or cc (just as a number), this may be wrong
so lets take 2GB RAM and multiply with 10 image layers in my .psb file (16bit) = 20 GB RAM, and multiply with 20 adjustment layers (guess they need less ram, for one lets say 500MB) = 20GB + 10GB = this 16bit .psb layer file would need 30GB RAM, so when i have 32GB in my imac, i set cs6 or cc to 70% ram usage, it misses at least round 8-10GB RAM > can i guess that photoshop would swap these 8GB onto my scratch disc? or do i miss something important in my thinking?
tricky thinking
thanks for help

station_two wrote:
The rule of thumb I follow 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 300 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.
- i dont use HDD anymore only SSDs, both internal and external
- i set history state to only 5 or 6, to improve performance
- i set cache size to 4 and tiles to "big and flat" with 1028kb (there is no "big and much layers" option)
- is this still the rule of thumb? i read it in 2009 , too, guess it was outdated, as cs6 and cc have improved codes in terms of performance?
- if you say "50 to 100 times the size of your largest file ever multiplied by the number of files you have open.":
i will not open more than one document at same time to prevent performance lags, so lets calc like: dokument size in finder (you mean in finder or doc. size shown in photoshop?) = e.g. 5GB x 100 = 500GB, so my external scratch disc SSD, i would buy now, should be at least 500GB, USB 3.0 or thunderbolt ... maybe better thunderbolt, yes? with usb 3.0 i could gain 300MB/sec if thats enough for photoshop?
thanks

What is a Scratch disc?

Hi, My discs (80+120gb) are almost full, I sought (and gained) info on the expanding your Mac forum and noticed a thread that referred to using a disc as a "scratch disc" for Photoshop, I use Photoshop a lot and would like to know what scratch disc means and how one makes a Photoshop scratch disc.
I am about to add a 500gb external FW HD so will have a disc spare to "free up" Would making one of them a scatch disc help Photoshops perfomance?
I can dedicate the 120gb to Photoshop as the 80gb contains the operating sysyem.
I am not the most computer literate person so easy English responses would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Robert

Hi
The following article, courtesy of MacGurus, contains some useful information on improving Photoshop performance, although it's a little techy in places:
http://homepage.mac.com/boots911/.Public/PhotoshopAccelerationBasics2.3.pdf
Just be aware that if both discs (80GB and 120GB) are connected to the same ribbon cable (as master and slave), they have to take turns sharing the ATA bus. Consequently if the Photoshop application is on one and the other is being used as the scratch disc, performance may not be optimal (although may still be better than at present).

SSD as Scratch Disc, SLC or MLC SSD?

hello
i am using a external 512 GB SSD (crucial m4 MLC-SSD) as photoshop cs6 and cc scratch disc and it runs well, i guess.
i get round 390/300 MB/sec read/write speeds over usb 3.0 in my imac 27" late 2013.
as i want to buy a second 500 GB SSD, would photoshop team or people who know detailed technical aspects about
MLC and SLC SSDs go for a SLC or MLC SSD?
i heard that SLC SSD´s (enterprise grade) are more suitable for very frequent read/writes regarding the wear level.
purpose: daily work with photoshop cs6 and cc, 8h per day, huge files: 16bit 300dpi 10.000 x 10.000 pixels with 30-50 layers.
i have 32GB RAM but i heard that photoshop cs6 and cc still use the scratch disc permanently even if there is enough ram.
i am constantly watching the read writes on my ssd discs with istatmenus
thanks

i think if i use a thunderbolt ssd scratch disc for photoshop, it has a superior sustained read and write throughput, is that right?
would you use the thunderbolt ssd in my case, or can i go with the usb3 ssd?
in the moment i have a 256GB thunderbolt ssd and a 500GB usb3 SSD (externals) to choose from.
i think my workflow would benefit from choosing the thunderbolt as scratch disc, but how can i find out
if the difference from using the usb3 ssd is just 5 or 10%?

Photoshop CC scratch disc error

I'm having a frequent scratch disc error program when coming back to my computer after being away. I'll pull up the program ... which has already been open and it'll just say "a scratch disc error has occured" and then shuts down.
my local hard drive where photoshop is installed has 250g free
I've got an external drive set as an additional scratch disc with 1.51T free.
It seems like it could be more of a sleep issue or something with coming back to something that was already open and maybe the external being asleep? But that seems highly unlikely for it to just go "meh. whatever. close." when locally there's still plenty of space left.
Faulting application name: Photoshop.exe, version: 14.2.1.570, time stamp: 0x52f4a9f2
Faulting module name: MSVCR100.dll, version: 10.0.40219.1, time stamp: 0x4d5f034a
Exception code: 0x40000015
Fault offset: 0x00000000000761c9
Faulting process id: 0x1960
Faulting application start time: 0x01cf64846ca3361b
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC (64 Bit)\Photoshop.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC (64 Bit)\MSVCR100.dll
Report Id: e2abcc66-d092-11e3-9d59-50e549bba8c0

I have not had any real problems with letting my workstation with an external disk enter sleep state. When the system wakes up I have often notice the my external 4TB Seagate usb 3 drive take some time to get running and will often see Windows Autoplay popup window for the drive. However I don't use that drive for application work space like Photoshop scratch space. For application may be off and running before the drive is ready after sleeping. I find the USB3 external hard disk performs almost as well as my internal 10k RPM 500GB disk. I did not expect that.

Scratch disc full in Photoshop CS2

This may be a dumb question, but I'm new to Macs. I'm working in Photoshop and went to crop an image and a box popped up telling me that the action could not be completed because the scratch disc is full. I have searched Mac help, and photoshop help and could not find anything telling me how to correct this.
To me, if the scratch disc is full then what I would want to do is empty, or remove everything from the scratch disc. At least that's my simple minded way of looking at things. If that's what I need to do, then how do I do that?
Can anyone help me understand and correct this problem?
Thanks,
Jack

I told you it was a dumb question. I figured out the problem. I didn't realize that the scratch disc was in fact my hard drive. That was the first light bulb to go on. Then I discovered that I had inadvertently entered inches in the crop aspect ratio boxes instead of pixels, which was what I wanted. Therefor, the image I thought I was cropping to a dimension of 2336 x 3504 px was trying to crop to 2336 x 3504 inches. No wonder my 209 GB of space available on my HD was not enough. It computes to 194 feet x 292 feet. Rather large image wouldn't you say.
Anyway, sorry for such a dumb post. I was just confused enough by the scratch disc thing that I didn't give it a thought to check for some dumb slip up like transposing inches for pixels.
I do thank you for your response though...... all is well again.
Jack

OSX Lion and Photoshop CS5 "scratch disc error"

I've been using Photoshop CS5 for awhile now (about a year and a half). Up to yesterday I was running OSX Snow Leapord with no issues. Yesterday I upgraded to OSX Lion and today, my first day using Photoshop in Lion, I'm getting repeated "scratch disc error" messages with a "quit" button (no other options). Photoshop works fine for awhile, three hours or so, and then I'll get the "scratch disc error" message and will be forced to quit Photoshop and restart.
My main drive is a 2Tb drive with 1.7Tb of available space, so I'm sure scratch disc space isn't a problem. I've got about another Tb of scratch disc space available on two other internal drives. I've got 14Gb of Ram, all memtested and working perfectly. It clearly seems to be an issue with OSX Lion since it never happened before today. A few other details: I'm up to date with Photoshop CS5, I have Open GL turned off because I'm on an older Mac Pro (a 3.0 Ghz dual quad core, 2.1) and my video card doesn't play nicely with Open GL (a whole different kind of crash).
All three times I've gotten the "scratch disc error" pop-up today it seems to have been when I open multiple files. This last time I opened something like 8 files. Big deal; sometimes I open 40 or more without any problems. So can anyone please help me with this issue? I have yet to lose any of my work (I save constantly - a habit born out of past frustrations), so it's managable, but it shouldn't be happening.
Thanks.

I am havng this same exact problem. Recently, I reinstalled my OSX Lion fresh, and also just installed CS5.5 Design Premium. I have been experiencing this same error repeatedly.
On my computer there are two separate Scratch Discs (non-partioned) and when the error first popped up, I tried switching between Scratch Discs. One at a time, even using other drives and still received the same error. I've done everything I can find suggested to no avail. All OS updates are done, CS5.5 is updated, permissions repaired, disks repaired, graphics driver current, OpenGL disabled, etc....
If we can determine a fix, it would be greatly appreciated. Photoshop is an awesome tool that I use extensively, and this is driving me insane!
BTW, here is the error I believe he is getting (same one I see way too many times a day)
Thanks, Billy

Photoshop CS5, Latest SSD drive and Scratch File

Hi everybody,
I just purchased i7-950 3.06GHZ computer with 12 GB tripple channel memory, and also Just ordered one Crucial RealSSD c300 128GB.
I'm planning to put my OS Win7Ultimate 64bit on it and Photoshop. Do you think I would benefite in any way from a second 64GB SSD dedicated to the Scratch drive?
I'm planning to hook my SSD to a SATAIII connector on my mobo.
Thank you for your input and time.
Serge

You will DEFINITELY benefit from having a second hard drive dedicated to use with Photoshop. Whether it has to be an SSD is up to you.
I can tell you this, however: When working with image documents large enough that you exceed your 12 GB of main memory, Photoshop's scratch files are often seen to grow to hundreds of GB in size. Yes, you read that correctly. So your 64 GB SSD driver will likely not be large enough.
I think your best bet is to use the money to get more RAM (people sometimes take Photoshop-oriented systems to 24 GB), then use a large, inexpensive hard drive for Photoshop scratch.
-Noel

I cannot download Photoshop because it says my scratch discs are full ?

I cannot download Photoshop because it says my "scratch discs" are full ?

Sound like you the disk you download to is full. The Photoshop download is over 1GB in size. Check that your download has a few GB free.

Photoshop wont start. Scratch disc not available

Please help. I assigned a certain drive on my Mac pro to be a scratch disc for CS4 like I did when i had a PC. Now when i try and start CS4 it stops and says "could not open a scratch file because the disc is not available" I press OK and then get "Could not initialize photoshop because the disk is not available". I uninstalled PS4 and then reinstalled but it still does it. The scratch disc I assigned is a partition of the main drive. I have no idea what to do next.

Thank you for the quick and correct answer. Almost as soon as I pushed the submit button on the problem I realized what I had done was a preference setting and remembered to go delete that file, after which all was fine. Whew

Photoshop 7.0 scratch disc full error.

I just reinstalled PS 7.0 on my Windows 7 Pro 64bit system and PS 7 won't open due to a scratch disc error message. When I tried to install the 7.1 update, it can't find the PS 7 folder even when I navigate to it. I tried ctrl-shift-alt keys together but I still can't get it to open so I can set the scratch disc preferences. What are the shortcut keys to use? Any suggestions why I can't update PS 7? Thanks.

Your hard drive is larger than 500GB and the program can't deal with this and/or there are permission issues. Downsize the partition, make sure you have the permissions set properly. Regarding teh update you are probably out of luck. Those old versions cannot access the changed registry structure and thus do not find the necessary information...
Mylenium

Installation/scratch disc location query

back since PS7, i've followed a bit of advice i found on a site in that PS was installed on a separate partition to the opsys, and the scratch discs were elsewhere too.
I'm putting in a new 120gig SSD and a 500gig normal drive tomorrow, obviously Win7 (64bit) will be on the SSD, is it worth partitioning that up and putting PS CS5 separate or does it not matter nowadays?
cheers

There's no good reason to partition your SSD; it likely wouldn't help or hurt performance either way, but your free space will be divided up, and 120 GB is none too much to start with.
You definitely DO want the Photoshop scratch drive to be physically different than the drive on which your opsys swap file is resident, though.
Assuming your SSD will be C: and your 500 GB drive will be D:...
Some of Adobe's software ALWAYS installs on drive C:, but I've heard that if you work at it you can get Photoshop installed on D: (I don't remember the specifics of the installer, though). It might be helpful to install Photoshop on the separate hard drive, simply because Windows may ultimately want to grow and grow until that 120 GB is mostly used up. A Photoshop CS5 installation chews up 1 GB or more of disk space.
-Noel

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

Scratch Disc Questions using Firewire External Drive & Imac

Hello. I've read through the existing questions regarding scratch disc and Photoshop, yet can't seem to find an answer to my questions. I would greatly appreciate any tips/advice. Here is my setup and situation:
I am running an iMac with a 2.16 intel core 2 duo processor, 3 GB memory, and running OS X version 10.6.4. I am currently using versions cs3 and cs4 of Photoshop, but plan to upgrade to cs5 soon.
The problem I am having is when running Photoshop, my computer becomes very slow. After reading about possible reasons, I came across a couple of sources (including Adobe themeselves) mentioning that the scratch disc should be a designated drive seperate from the drive containing the operating system. Since I am using an iMac that only allows for one internal drive, my only apparent option seems to be an external drive.
Many people say don't use an external drive, but if you are going to; use an eSATA or firewire. The imac does have firewire 800 capabilities. Should I consider this?
Now I'm wondering if it's a bad idea to purchase a macbook for my next computer (what I wanted to do) because it will also only have one drive, not allowing for a seperate drive for the scratch disc. Any thoughts? I've read around the net but haven't found any definitive answers.

Designer,
Photoshop benefits greatly from having a scratch disk on a separate physical drive, not on the boot disk or on another partition of the boot disk. It's almost not worth connecting via Firewire 400 because the transfer limitations don't allow much performance improvement. But using a Firewire 800 connection gives excellent performance.
Running Photoshop on a one-drive machine is a little frustrating due to the performance hit without the separate scratch drive.
Rich

I have PSE-12 on Mac. Got message "scratch disc full" tried changing drive to backup disc. Now PSE-12 will not open to allow me to go back to original drive. What can I do?

Using PSE-12 on my Mac and got the message 'scratch disc full' I have backup disc attached to computer and tried making this the number 1 disc. I now can't get PSE-12 to open so that I can get back and reverse the order of these discs. What can I do?

Go to your username>library>preferences and delete:
com.adobe.PhotoshopElements.plist
Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 paths
Adobe Photoshop Elemetns 12 settings
and any lockfiles with the same names. That library is hidden in 10.7 and up. To see it, click the Go menu in the finder and hold down the Option key and it will appear below the little house for your user account. While you're in there go to the saved application states folder and delete any for PSE.

Photoshop scratch disc (SSD), thunderbolt or USB3.0?

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