SCRATCH DISK MYSTERY

Hi Gang
I've got several external drives - I always use at least one of them for Scratch Disk, (since my 2nd internal is filled). I was capturing to an external drive designated 'OWC 6'. I checked system settings several times to make sure. However at the time I didn't realize that there was no sub-folder called 'FC Pro Documents'.
Please see the Screen Shot;
http://www.locationstudio.net/NoSubFolder.jpg
I started to get the Beach Ball and couldn't understand why? Had to do several 'Force Quits'
Finally I trashed preferences, and that's when I saw the Sub Folder. Please see the Screen Shot;
http://www.locationstudio.net/SubFolder.jpg
Things seem 'ok' now, but I see that the captured video wound up on the system drive.
Anyone have any insight into this puzzle?
Thanx
Mike
http://www.vimeo.com/7340608

ENIGMACODE wrote:
Hello Rienk
... I'm capturing Mini DV Tapes at 720x480, 29.97 and I checked the Film Log for confirmation of this.
Well, shouldn't give a problem whatsoever
I've been working on this project for 5 years - never any Beach Ball problems until I installed a new reliably proven WD 640GB system drive - any problems with drive? - I seriously doubt it.
Proven Reliable? Who says? Some disk reviews? Or that you had 10 of those before? Doesn't say anything about THIS disk. But I get your point.
I first got the Beach Ball, after I inadvertently/accidentally captured some video into my system drive.
It is unclear to me if you changed the media that you captured to the internal system HD to the extaernal HD AND reconnected the masterclips in the project to that media on the external disk...Did you do so?
Ever since then, I haven't been able to get of it, even after I double check the Scratch assignment. When does it occur? It's indescrimate - can't pin it down.
Did you import a lot of stills in the project? Do you see this behaviour on other projects? Does this behaviour stop when the OWC 6 is detached?
Tell us what you did to descriminate the problem.
I also originally asked about and posted these screen shoots;
http://www.locationstudio.net/NoSubFolder.jpg
I saw those. Sorry not answered that one. Well actually it shouldn't really matter. As lomg as FCP is finding the clips, it can play them. The folderstructure has nothing to do with the performance of FCP. As long as you don't try to play back footage from the internal system HD.
Finally I trashed preferences, and that's when I saw the Sub Folder. Please see the Screen Shot; http://www.locationstudio.net/SubFolder.jpg
Same.
Does the Sub-Folder make any difference?
No. Not for the performance. It does bring your newly captured footage in another folder. that's all.
When I get time, I'll try David Kuhnen's suggestion.
How are the disks attached? FireWire 800?
Other footage than DV? Stills, JPEGS, etc?
Tried reinstalling FCP? Asking this, because you had a new internal system HD.
Installed everything fresh? Or updated from the old HD. Could cause all kind of performance issues.

Similar Messages

Unable to continue ... because of mysterious Scratch Disk problem

Okay, so I've been using Photoshop Elements 2.0 for years without incident. Today I get a screen saying my scratch disk is almost full. I don't know what this means (I couldn't find any such folder/file on my computer). No matter what I put in for Disk 2-4 options I get the following message in the end "Unable to continue because of a hardware or system error. Sorry, but this error is unrecoverable."
Search the Forum but didn't find anything. Ideas?
Dave

Scratch disc is the space assigned for Elements to write temporary files to...like history steps, etc. The fastest scratch disc will be an internal drive.
You don't say which OS. If you are on Windows, you might be able to squeeze out some more hard drive space by defragging your hard drive. More RAM helps too although I am not sure to what extent scratch fills in for lack of RAM.
If your hard drive is full, it would be better to move your photos onto an external drive than to assign an external to scratch. It should be relatively pain free to move your photos as you have E2. You don't have to worry about Organizer/catalog issues.
If you go the external hard drive route, you will need to connect your external hardrive to your computer and turn it on your before you launch Elements. If you don't, Elements will not "see"...detect... the external drive when you attempt to navigate to it.
If you aren't already, I would recommend backing up all of your photos and important items by copying them onto DVD discs.
Personally, I move all of my files onto an external hard drive after I gather enough to fill a DVD disc. I copy the files to DVD disc as a backup then move everything that I copied onto my external hard drive. (I also keep all my pack rat items like PDFs, Q-Time Movies, brushes, and other assorted junk on my external hard drives...yeah drives. LOL)
Terri

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.

Scratch disks and RAM usage

i would like to understand the relationship between scratch disks and RAM usage in Photoshop.
While i was working on a fairly big psb file (2gb), photoshop kept prompting that I was out of memory, but in fact the utilization was only 75% (i had 16gbs total, photoshop was only using 7gb, and i allowed PS to use up to 14gb in total). when it says out of memory, it was actually my scratch disk at fault ( i only set 1 scratch disk, which was my 120gb SSD running out of space).
any idea how I can optimize PS to use up all my RAM first before even touching my scratch disk? (short of using a RAMdisk, please).
thanks!

I am curious about this also. I just reinstalled W-7--have 11 G of physical memory--a ton of hard drive empty space also, and I have been wondering why PS_CC is so slow--since basically I have only put my Security and Browser in addition to Adobe back on the Dell XPS computer..... At least now it does show the downloading percentage (like .psd file) , but that must be what is happening. I do think that some of these "frozen" screens I have been experiencing, was because the program was using scratch disk, instead of the Ram... I came up from CS-5, and can't describe it in detail, but just realize how slow PS-CC is in most everything. Going back and see if reallocating will help...

"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

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

Internal hard drive for use as scratch disk

Am running OS 10.4.11 on a dual core 2.3 Ghz PowerPC G5. Want to install a 2nd internal hard drive for use as a scratch disk w/ FCP and for my media files, etc. Given that I can only accomodate an SATA I drive w/ 150 Gbps transfer rate what might some decent choices be for a 500 Gb to 1 TB drive suited for video (and a PowerPC G5)? I'll also be adding an external drive for backup if anyone has any suggestions.

Thanks for the recommendations. I had been looking at the Hitachi CinemaStar series but you have to reset the drive to SATA 1 for use w/ a G5 PowerMac. Resetting the drive, according to Hitachi, can only be done on a PC which I don't have access to. And I think that holds true for all their drives that are not strictly SATA 1.

CS2 not recognizing external hard drive as a scratch disk

I have an external hard drive that I want to use as a scratch disk but while I can navigate to have Photoshop open files from the drive, when I go to my prefs and try and select it as a scratch disk, it's not listed as an option - i.e. Photoshop only shows "start up" and "Mac Hard Drive" as choices. But when I go in that same dialogue box, and look for an additional plug-ins folder, I can navigate to the external drive. It's also doing the same thing for a thumb drive I have and two other external hard drives which mount fine.
I have restarted the program, removed the Prefs file, and restarted the program again but it still doesn't see any of the external hard drives.
Any ideas?

mike,
Most drives are not optimized for Mac as purchased. Unless marked otherwise, consider that every drive you acquire, whether a fast-spinning hard drive or USB flash drive comes formatted as FAT so it can be recognized and used by both Macs and Windows machines. Use Disk Utility and reformat it as HFS+ "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
Just be aware that if you are reformatting your existing drives, you need to back up your data first or it'll be gone forever.
Neil

Macbook Pro with Dual hard drives. Scratch Disk, Memory 64bit, Raid, Set Up Questions.

Hello, this is my first post.
I just upgraded from the original 2006 17" Macbook Pro to a refurbished 13" Macbook Pro 2.53GHZ 4GB Ram (2009 model).
I bought the MCE Tech Optibay and installed it (if you dont know anything about it, ask me, its amazing.) So now I have 2x 500GB 7200RPM Seagate hard drives installed.
I am running Snow Leopard, CS3, Lightroom 1.4.
I have the main hard drive set up with Snow Leopard and all the Applications. I keep all my files on external firewire 800 drives, except files I am currently working on.
The second hard drive is set up as a scratch disk for Photoshop CS3 and that is it.
I am looking to upgrade to CS5 and Lightroom 3 here within this month or so. Or if I get anxious, tomorrow, haha.
I want to know the best setup I can do with my current set up with CS3 and for my future setup with CS5.
Any info will appreciated.
-Would some kind of raid set up with my internal drives be better? How does raid work with scratch disks?
-If I upgrade to 8GB memory in my macbook pro, would I even see a difference in performance if I didn't have a scratch disk? Since CS5 and Snow Leopard can use more memory in 64bit.
I think thats all I have on my brain right now. I may have more questions, or I can guarantee I will have more later.
Thanks alot.

First the scratch. Like you said, most everyone has a different take on scratch discs but I'd guess you're wasting one heck of a lot of hard drive space using all 500 GB for Scratch, did I read that right? If I did read it correctly YES, partition it and get some use out of it!!
I've got a unibody MBP 2.93GHz, OS 10.5.8, CS3 & PS 5 (running in 32bit mode), and 8 gigs of ram. I've partitioned the one 300 GB drive so 50GB is scratch, the other partition is for OS, & Apps, and documents (images).
I use LR 2 first than export to PS 5 to finish up. My photos get to be 300MB to 500MB in size and both versions of PS work on this setup just fine. Using PS 5 in 64 bit mode is faster opening files but NON of my plugin's are 64 bit yet, that's why I'm still stuck in 32 bit mode.
Not knowing what size or kind of files you work on makes giving advice a bit tough but try setting the status indicator (don't know the right name for it) in the bottom left corner of any PS open file to "Efficiency" and watch what happens when you process your files. I rarely see mine drop below 90%, I've got the usable RAM in PS Prefs set to it's max suggested, cut way back on History and Cache.
Can't wait for NIK and others to offer their plugin in 64 bit, later this year is what I was told.
There used to be an old "rule of thumb" with old version of PS about Scratch disc size. I don't remember exactly but it may have been 3 to 5 times the size of your biggest file??
Good luck, Alan

Weird RAM/Scratch Disk issue

Having a weird memory problem with Photoshop CS4 on my G5 Quad.
Let me see if I can explain this properly....
When I open up a file in Photoshop, I notice that the available space on my hard drive reduces (info at the bottom of any Finder window). Essentially, it's using the scratch disk.
I would expect this with a very large file that exeeds the amount of ram in the machine. But it does it even with files of 5-10 Mb. It appears to me (just a guess) that Photoshop isn't using RAM when opening or manipulating a file. Though I have more than enough to open it.
Even when I close the file, or "purge all" from PS's edit menu, my available disk space does not come back. Only when I quit out of Photoshop completely, will it come back.
Make sense?
No other application seems to be having this issue. Any ideas on what might be causing this?
I've run Apples Disk Utility, and everything came out fine. Ran TechTool Deluxe, and no problems there either. Hoping maybe I'm just missing some piece of the puzzle first, before I uninstall/reinstall Photoshop.
System specs:
G5 Quad (2.5 GHz)
4 GB RAM
OSX 10.5.8
Photoshop CS4 (11.0.1)
Memory usage set to allow up to 70% (but doesn't seem to matter what I set it to)

This is normal.
Photoshop needs to allocate scratch space for data, in case it needs to write that data to disk later -- otherwise you would randomly fail with "out of scratch space" in the MIDDLE of an operation.
Photoshop is using RAM, but needs to allocate the scratch space, and make sure the allocation succeeded.
And yes, RAM and scratch space get reused, so rarely decrease.
Other applications that deal with datasets larger than RAM will have the same issues.
And technically your OS swapfiles do the same things.

Need advice on my new Scratch disk

I just received my new Seagate 750 gig external drive.
What should I know before hooking it up to my MacBook and use it with FCE?
Do I need to format it?

It did take a few seconds. Thanks!
And I set the scratch disk to the new drive.
On my macbook pro there is only one FW400 Firewire plug receptacle. On the Seagate there are 2. Can I use one for the camera and the other, obviously to connect it to the mac?
Thanks again
Gary

When I try to use the internal hard drive as a scratch disk I get this error "unable to set scratch disk- the selected directory is on write protect or non-writable media. Any ideas on how to fix this. It only happens in fcp.

When I try to use the internal hard drive as a scratch disk I get this error "unable to set scratch disk- the selected directory is on write protect or non-writable media. Any ideas on how to fix this. It only happens in fcp.

By internal, I assume you're referring to your systems (boot) drive. Is it, by chance, a partitioned dive?
Also…although many people successfully use their systems drives as scratch disks, over time you'll have better results using a dedicated drive for your media.
Good luck.
Russ

SCRATCH DISK MYSTERY

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