Save Scratch Disk with Project?

I have multiple projects on multiple drives, and I hate the fact that every time i open a project I have to make sure that it's set to the proper scratch disk. Is there any way for FCP to remember which disk is associated with which project?

Aha! The ole' laptop problem. Yes, I can see how that would be an issue. Well, I understand your position now and by now you know that it isn't an implemented procedure in FCP, BUT....
There is a trick to get FCP to always prompt you for the scratch disk. It may at least help prevent you from forgetting to set it.
First, rename one of your drives to something unique that you won't be using again (like "Unset Scratch Disk). Open FCP. Set the scratch disk to this drive and close FCP. Rename your drive back to whatever it was originally.
Now go to where your preferences are located. They can be found in:
home/library/preferences/com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist
home/library/preferences/Final Cut Pro User Data/Final Cut Pro 6.0 Prefs
home/library/preferences/Final Cut Pro User Data/Final Cut Pro Obj Cache
home/library/preferences/Final Cut Pro User Data/Final Cut Pro Prof Cache
Select them and hit CMDOPTi (get info for multiple items)
From the info box, check the locked button to lock the preferences.
Now, whenever you open FCP, it will always look for "Unset Scratch Disk", and when it can't find it, it'll prompt you to choose a scratch disk. Go ahead and choose what you'll be working on and go to work. When you close FCP it'll try to write that change to your preferences, but because they're locked, it won't be able to. So the next time you open FCP, it'll again ask you where the scratch disk is.
I realize this sounds drastic. And I personally would get tired of it after the second time it asks me, but it may help you get into the habit of setting your scratch disk when working with different projects. You could always unlock your preferences when you've had enough.
Anyway, it's just a thought if you're interested. BTW, I always lock my preferences to preserve my settings and I recommend it. Perhaps it may help you just to have them locked to a particular drive so that you always know what they're set to at the beginning of any session.
Andy

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I'm moving a project from my old Vaio laptop to my new iMac. I've transferred the media and project file fairly easily. Are there any pitfalls to be aware of if I now change scratch disks settings to an external drive? Previously everything was on one and the same disk. Now I've got 2 external SSDs and the iMac's internal SSD.

MM was very buggy in v4 and v5. So much so it was generally referred to as "Media Mangler" .
It was greatly improved in v6 and v7. I haven't had issues with the later versions.
The main problem with it now is the documentation is not exceptionally clear and a poor choice for how to handle the media can lead to a disaster.
Cheers,
x

Switching scratch-disk during project?

Hello all,
I did a quick search and couldn't find exactly what I'm looking for so I'm hoping the community here can help.
I'd like to switch the entire content of my original scratch-disk to a new (faster) HD. Would this be a matter of copying and pasting everything FCP related into the new HD, setting the new scratch-disk to point to the new HD and then locating all my files again at start-up of the project?
I'm switching HD's b/c:
1. My old drive kept hanging up (too slow) and it made editing almost impossible at times.
2. It was running out of space.
Thank you!

MM was very buggy in v4 and v5. So much so it was generally referred to as "Media Mangler" .
It was greatly improved in v6 and v7. I haven't had issues with the later versions.
The main problem with it now is the documentation is not exceptionally clear and a poor choice for how to handle the media can lead to a disaster.
Cheers,
x

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I am currently in the middle of a FCE4 project, but I would like to move my scratch disk to an external hard drive. Will I run into any hiccups if I do this mid-project?

So can I specify certain scratch disks for different projects? I read in the manual and in Tom's book "Final Cut Express 4: Editing Workshop" that if I select numerous destinations for scratch disks, it will choose the one with the most space and then move on to the next one once that destination is full. But if I have several hard drives set as scratch disks, can I simply choose a specific one when I start a new project in FCE4? If so, how do I do this?

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I have 2 500GB disks in a RAID0 array for Windows / programs and another 1T RAID1 array for data. Where should I place the scratch disk?

Should I create a dedicated partition on the RAID0 array for the scratch space?
Please do yourself a big favor and do not do any partitions. They will only slow things down, as the OS thinks it's 2 physical HDD's and will tell them (the two logical HDD's), that it needs data at the same time. Remember, it's one physical HDD (even though it's striped, it's managed as one.
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2.) Now, as of CS, PS no longer has a real limitation on how much HDD space it can use for Scratch Disks. Going back, on was limited to 4GB and had the ability to set 4 of these. Back then, having say a 32GB SCSI HDD, and doing some 4GB partitions made sense. Now, it does not.
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Just some thoughts,
Hunt

Firewire scratch disk with CS4/ 10.6.4

I'm currently using CS4 in an '07 iMac and trying to use a Newertech Ministack external drive as a dedicated scratch disk. The external drive has been erased and freshly formatted as Extended Journaled, with no OS or any other apps. This was a method(recommneded at the time) I used successsfully with a MBP running 10.5 and a LaCie external drive.
Now, when I try and designate the external as the no. 1 drive on the list in Performance Preferences, it keeps reverting back to the internal drive as #1 after restarting PS. I move the external to the first position on the list and check the Active box. The internal drive is at 2 and the Active box unchecked. When I quit PS and start it up again, the internal is back at the first position with Active checked and the external at 2 and unchecked.
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Any insight greatly appreciated.
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Thanks for replying.
Have been doing service on a bunch of machines lately, so the journaling was done on auto pilot. Have gone back and reformatted the drive as extended.
Trashed the prefs via the 'Command/shift/option' method with no change. What's funny is that there is no " Adobe Photoshop CS Settings" folder in the Preferences folder in Library. So can't drag it to the trash.
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MULTIPLE SCRATCH DISKS FOR THE SAME PROJECT

Hello... I have a quick scratch disc question:
I have project that is running too low on scratch disk space. Can I use my boot drive (that has FCP on it) as an alternate scratch disk for the same project? Or does one project have to have the same scratch disk?
Thanks!
- TEXASFLOOD

Hi Texasflood,
Having all the media in one place is preferable. Among other things when using multiple scratch disks you always have to make sure and double check that your logging bins are correctly set and that FCP is using the scratch disk you want.
What you could do is use Media manager to move the existing media to the new scratch disk with plenty of space (Media manager will reconnect all the media) and then capture your remaining 24GB in your new scratch disk.
Read about how to use Media Manager in the manual and checkout the paragraph in this linked article titled [Copying And Moving Projects|http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/media_manager_fcp_4balis.html].
If you do use MM choose to copy and not move media, then for the piece of mind check first that everything is in place and working and only then delete the media in your older drive.
G.

Scratch disk photoshop CC

I am fairly new to PhotoShop, I have been using Adobe Lightroom for years though. I did download photoshop in the past but I've decided to do it again since I'm getting into multiple exposure stuff more.
Will a 256GB external portable SSD be a good scratch disk for my laptop for photoshop? It has nothing on it. Also, I read online scratch disk can get full. I was under the impression scratch disk erase whenever you're done with a project and it goes back to lightroom.
Since I save the edits in my lightroom catalog after photoshop is there really any reason to save any photoshop project? Unless of course I'm not done with it. If so, what is the importance of the scratch disk? Do I need to save scratch disk data and not delete it?
I'm fairly confused on what the scratch disk even does really. I kinda get it, but kinda don't. I get it will be faster. But I don't get why it wouldn't self delete if I'm saving the edits in lightroom for photoshop.

I don't know how many bits the stacks are. I use a Sony A7R full frame camera which is 36.4MP. I do not use the HDR function in photoshop because that never looks good. I put all 3 as layers and do it manually.
I have a lot of hard drives, but most not being portable. I have two portable ones. Which would be better; The SSD 256GB USB 3.0 or the Firewire 1TB portable drive.
I do have one other portable drive that is USB 3.0, 1TB and is actually 7200RPM even though it's a portable drive. It's as fast as the desktop drives. But that's the one I store my photo's on but if needed I can change the drives around.
If my Sony is using 32bit, is that going to be a problem? I have not yet done it with the Sony. The last time I had photoshop and was doing the manual HDR, I did it with the Canon 5D Mark iii with no scratch disk and it worked flawlessly. In both my macbook pro's I have 16GB of ram, a really good video card, and both have quad core i7 processors.
So, again, I do not want to uncheck my internal drive as a scratch disk drive correct? Just check them both? I've done speed test and the internal SSD is faster than the USB 3.0 SSD because it's internal and the other will only do 3.0 I won't do thunderbolt.
How big can can scratch drive get? Is there a limit on it?

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?

Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 Scratch Disk Anomoly

Okay, I ran into an odd problem.
I have a 1TB firewire external drive that I would like to use as my main scratch disk. Every time I try to set my SDs to that drive, through both the capture window and through the Edit>Preferences menu, I have problems. At first it told me I didn't have permission to write to the drive. I think I've fixed that. But now there is an error during batch capture. It says there was an unknown recorder error.
This most recent time I logged 3 clips and set it to batch capture. One clip, the final one in the group that I logged, captured with no problems. But the first two didn't capture. I tried to re-batch those two and in the capture window, where it displays the remaining disk space as it captures, it read that there was only 4.0 GB of space available, and within a minute it gave me the recorder error message. I've got almost 900 GB open on that drive. What's the deal?
And I am confused as to why one clip out of the three captured successfully.
Can anyone shed some light on this? Any help is much appreciated, this project deadline is coming up soon.
Thanks,
BLG

BLG,
Is your external a FW-400, or FW-800? Is it formatted NTSF, or FAT-32? If FAT-32, you can easily Convert (Windows Help File) it to NTSF.
I do not Capture to my externals, but do use them for all other Scratch Disks, and Project files.
Last, is both your camera and your FW external on the same controller chip? That can be a major problem. I'm not talking daisy-chaining, which is worse, but 2 devices on the same FW controller chip.
Good luck,
Hunt

Mountain Lion not liked by Photoshop as a Scratch Disk

I upgraded a volume to Mountain Lion and now Photoshop (CS6 - 13.0.1) won't let me use the volume as a Scratch Disk.
I could use said volume as a Scratch Disk with the previous OS (Snow Leopard) without a problem — now, when I try to open Photoshop I get a dialog box: "Could not open a scratch file because the disk is not available." I click OK and another dialog box pops up: "Could not initialize Photoshop because the disk is not available." and Photoshop closes.
I made the User > Library folder visible in case PS needed that and I repaired permissions, then I manually changed permissions on the volume to Read & Write for the Wheel (it was set to Read only) all with no success.
Any idea as to why I now cannot use a volume with the Mountain Lion OS as a scratch disk would be appreciated.
Geoff

I have no problem running PS CS6 with Mountain Lion. I would post in the Adobe support forums:
http://helpx.adobe.com/support/

Firewire disk or USB2.0 disk for scratch disk?

I heard many times, everyone recommend Firewire for scratch disk if do video editing with FCP on iMac 27 quad-core i7.
But I feel a bit confused when I use my Sony SDR-12 only with USB2.0 (No Firewire port) to import AVCHD to my iMac. Since it is USB2.0 at the first place while importing, why do I have to upgrade my scratch disk to a higher level Firewire? I assume when manufacture – Sony, etc. default USB2.0 to be their interface, all the other parameters like bit rate etc won’t get any better or worse when I still use USB2.0 scratch disk with FCP.
Is my assumption all right?
Or, if I use USB2.0 scratch disk, the quality of my video or processing time will be significantly downgraded then Firewire scratch disk?
Thanks - Reno

Consumer drives at places like Costco are cheap for a reason. No-names often have older technology or limited specs that are not readily apparent but will show up in use. Even the big names reduce features or specs to get the price down for big-box retailers.
You can find good buys at big box stores, but you can do as well or better from places like newegg.com, buy.com, tigerdirect, etc. My personal recommendations are OWC ... and I wouldn't hesitate to get a Lacie d2 Quadra or d2 Quadra Enterprise class drive. And, the vendors StudioX suggested are top notch.
Your profile says you have a 27" Quad-core, i7 iMac, so you appreciate quality and capabilities. Don't skimp on external FW drives, especially for critical data & uses like video.
Best way to protect yourself is read reviews before purchasing, regardless of where you purchase.

PS5 won't start Scratch Disk Issues

I would really appreciate some help - I'm working to a deadline and got it into my head that I could speed things up if I reallocated my scratch disk to a bigger HDD (I have a Mac Pro with 4). So in a brain-fade moment I assigned the 3 non system disks in priority order BUT deactivated the Scratch Disk on the System drive. Photoshop will not now restart and gave the following error messages: "Could not open a scratch file because the disk is not available". followed by "Could not initialize Photoshop because the disk is not available". I went back 24 hours in Time Machine expecting that to fix things but, alas, no change. How can I reassign the scratch disks with the program off?

Yes, because I managed to fix the problem with Mac Command+Option+Shift .... DOH!
Thank you all very much.

PS won't let me save because "Disk not Available"

This is the second time this has happened. Customer help had me delete a file in the library but I can't remember which file. Can anyone help me?

If it is the scratch disk full, you may try to delete .tmp / edit/purge/all. Or assign a scratch disk with enough space--if that's what you mean. But if it is disk not available, it's because of the disk permission? On mac, choose the scratch disk you want, press command I-> Sharing &Permission-> Ignore ownership on this volume. (IF that is the boot drive, ignore this suggestion. Don't do it.)

Save Scratch Disk with Project?

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