Scratch Disk Preferences

Hi,
I have Photoshop CS4
Is it possible to have 2 hard drives checked in the scratch disk preferences/performance, or only the C:Drive
My laptop hard drive is partitioned
C:Drive & D:Drive
Can I select both of these drives to increase performance?
Thanks
Phillip

It is not easy to explain briefly how the scratch disk works.
For CS4, it is covered in this Knowledge Base article on CS4 performance, which is worth reading in its entirety.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404439.html

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Error when launching Photoshop - cannot modify scratch disk preferences

Hi all,
I recently installed photoshop CS5. When launching it I get the following error:
'Could not open a scratch file because the disk is not available'.
I went on this forum and found out several threads relevant to that issue. I did the following to try to fix the problem:
Did a clean uninstall of CS5, made sure no file pertaining to CS5 were remaining
Reinstalled CS5
As the problem was still occuring I did the following (as hinted in the threads)
I reset the photoshop preferences according to http://forums.adobe.com/thread/370735?tstart=0
I modified the setting of the drive HD (read & write everywhere, share folder checked)
I then tried to change the scratch disk preferences (launch photoshop then click Option+Command+Shift)I can select my disk but the selection does next time I try it is still the same (c.f. screen shot): first = startup, second = none, etc.)
I would really appreciate if someone could help me on this one.
Thank in advance,
Francis

I have one drive, but the point is rather that when I select it (=macintosh HD), it is still Startup that appears in the menu as depicted above on the next launch.

Illustrator 2014: Scratch disk preference keeps resetting itself

Hello Illustrator community.
I have recently noticed that in my Illustrator CC 2014 18.0.0, the scratch disk preference setting keeps resetting itself. I'm using a MacBook pro with a single SSD, but I have an external Lacie Thunderbolt SSD that I got to use as the scratch disk for Illustrator and Photoshop. The problem is that if I set the scratch preference to use the external as the primary and my startup as the secondary, everything is fine and it let's me know that the change will take effect once it's reopened. Upon reopening Illustrator I double check and it's saved, and everything works fine. But if I happen to open Illustrator without my external attached, when I check the scratch preference, it will revert to using the startup as the main scratch location, which I understand. But the next time illustrator is opened with my external connected, the scratch setting is still defaulted to using the startup disk. At that point I would need to change the preference, close illustrator and then reopen to make sure Illustrator is using the external as scratch.
So for some reason it's not saving my preference for the scratch disk, while all other preferences seem to be saved fine. In Photoshop CC 2014, I can set the scratch preference, which works fine, close Photoshop and reopen without the external attached and then close and reopen with the external reattached, and it will remember my preference for having the external as the primary scratch.
Is this just the way Illustrator is meant to work, or is this possibly a bug? Anyone have experience with this?
I used Illustrator CC 17.x.x before this but didn't notice if it operated the same way, since at that time I didn't have a dedicated scratch disk to use.
Thank you very much, I look forward to your help and replies!

The last thing Adobe AI does upon a quit is to write the existing state of the preferences file to disk. If it is using the local HD as scratch, then that is what is recorded in the preferences.

How do I change the scratch disk?

How do I edit disk ? - I'm getting the "disk is full" warning.
How do I edit scratch disk ?

I like that you used a big, easy to read font, but you didn't use quite enough words...
Please list the OS and Photoshop version you're using.
Are any of your disks actually full?
If you can open Photoshop, you can configure the scratch disk preferences in Edit - Preferences - Performance (in recent versions of Photoshop that is).
If you can't even open Photoshop, you can set your scratch disk preferences by pressing and holding the Control and Alt keys (or their Mac equivalents) immediately upon cold-starting Photoshop. You have to be very quick, and if you're quick enough it will prompt you as follows:
-Noel

How to fix scratch disk error

if i add a external drive to my macbook air will it stop the scratch disk message from coming up each time i try to use photoshop cs6?

I take it you've already chosen the air HD for scratch in Photoshop's Preferences. If not, you can do that now. The external drive could be used for scratch, but it could also slow things down considerably because it ( Photoshop ) will be grabbing resources from far away. And, if it's a USB external drive, well it's not the best setup. See is re-setting the scratch disk preference will get rid of that pesty warning dialog.

"Could not initialize photoshop because scratch disks are full."

"Could not initialize photoshop because scratch disks are full." This is the error message that pops up when I try to open my Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. I just installed this program on my new HP Pavilion Model h8-1214, which has 1.8 TB of space with 10.0 GB of RAM. I have read forums on this problem, but they tell how to fix the problem through Photoshop. How do I fix the scratch disk settings without being able to open Photoshop? Please help me with this problem for the Adobe Support team will not even answer my question..
Thanks.

By far the easiest solution is to upgrade to photoshop elements 10 or newer, which has no problems with big hard drives and has some new features you may like.
It's available for a thirty day trial.
Actually versions pse 3 and later have no problems with large hard drives.
Here are a couple things you can try which might work:
Option 1: Just after double clicking on the pse 2 shortcut press the Ctrl+Alt keys and keep holding the keys until you get the scratch disk preferences dialog
then choose your recovery partition as the First. This would only work if you have a recovery partition or another smaller hard drive installed that you can use as the scratch disk.
(i don't have a recovery partition on this computer)
Option 2. Shrink (shrink volume) your present hard drive down to 1 tb
Option 3: If you have windows 7 pro or ultimate you can use virtual xp (downloaded from microsoft)

Changing the scratch disk to hard drive

Hello, I've read the forums on here on how to change the scratch disk. I have a Mac Book Pro and I've downloaded the trial version of Adobe Photoshop CC. I brought a Seagate Hard drive 4TB and it's installed and ready to go on my computer, but for some reason I still can't change it. Whenever I go to the Scratch Disk Preferences, the only option I have to change the scratch disk to, is to the Macintosh HD... What am I doing wrong? I don't have enough memory with the regular Mac.
Also, I tried the Command + Alt(option) right on cold starting the program, which brings up scratch disk preferences and, still, I do not get the option of changing it to the Back Up drive from Seagate. Help please.

how did you install the HD
how is it formatted (try using Apple's Disk Utility> Erase> Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

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.

Save as Photoshop PDF Scratch disk locked?

I searched the forums, but apparently my issue only crops up when someone tries to launch PS. I can launch and do everything else just fine; however, I attempted to save as > PDF and received the scratch disk locked message. I can successfully save as PDF if I use the launch as admin option, but this seems odd since I can do everything else just fine without the need to do that.
Here are my steps:
Save as > Photoshop PDF
Click OK on "The settings you choose in the Save Adobe PDF dialog can override your current settings...."
I change [b]nothing[/b] in the Save Adobe PDF dialog. I simply click Save PDF.
Select Yes for "Preserve Photoshop Editing Capabilities" in the prompt.
Here is where I get the error message.
"Could not open a scratch file because the file is locked, you do not have necessary access permissions, or another program is using the file. Use the 'Properties' command in the Windows Explorer to unlock the file."
At this point, Photoshop does not crash or exit. It just simply will not save the file. This is the first time I've tried to save as PDF, so it could just be a user error > replace user situation. :d
I have tried the CTRL + Shift + Alt method of launching to wipe my preferences only to have the same result. My scratch disk is an internal drive used only as storage with 1.30 TB available.
Photoshop CS6 Extended
Windows 7 64bit
User account is an admin, but I have never had a need to launch PS as an admin specifically.
Thanks in advance.

Checked my permissions on C:\Users\***\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe PDF\Settings and everything is fine.
Taking that info and some google work I came across this: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WS23B45D06-1977-4006-8BEB-2DBB08CA502Ea.htm l#WSA79FA899-BC95-401e-BD44-5B26BC31B369
Apparently, there should be PDF settings files in C:\Users\***\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe PDF\Settings; however, my folder was empty, but the article above also says to move them from an 'Extras' folder located within ProgramData. Copied the settings over, tried again, same result.
Am I supposed to have Acrobat installed for this to work properly? I don't have Acrobat, nor do I even use Reader (I use a different program for in-browser PDF).
//edit
Apparently it was in my settings on the PDF save dialog. I removed the settings that I moved over and tried again. This time I actually fiddled with the settings and used Smallest File Size instead of HQ Print, and that seemed to have worked. Messed with things some more, and narrowed it down to the Preserve Photoshop Editing Capabilities option. As long as that option is UN-checked, then everything works smoothly, including HQ quality.

Could not use the type tool because the scratch disks are full in Photoshop CS5.1?

How do of get rid of the scratch disk error in photoshop? I'm using Photoshop CS5.1 extended and this error message apperars each time I try to do anything in Photoshop that message comes up. Anyone have any suggestions on how I can remove this error?

What operating system are you using?
Is your hard drive running low on free space?
How much free space is left on your hard drive?
Is your scratch disk for photoshop set to the Startup drive or some other drive?
(photoshop (edit)>preferences>preformance)

Photoshop CS5 does not want to open after I changed the scratch disks in prefs

I was working on a large document in Photoshop CS5 that ate too much of my main drive (to the point I had to quite and restart a few times to clear it out) when the main drive was set as a scratch disk. I went in to preferences and changed the scratch disk to my secondary internal drive, where I keep all my media. Then quit Photoshop to clear the cache.
When I tried to open Photoshop again I get a message at start up (haven't gotten in to the program yet) saying: "Could not open a scratch file because the disk is not available". Clicked OK. Then another warning message: "Could not initialize Photoshop because the disk is not available."
Both disks are mounted and available. Since Photoshop never actually opens up I cannot go in and reset the scratch disk to my intinital settings.
Anybody got an idea what I can do to solve this?
Thanks,
/Fred

Worst case: trashing prefs by keeping ctrl-alt-shift pressed while starting Photoshop (and then using the dialog) should allow you to open it.

Could not place picture, scratch disks are full

Hello, after fresh installation of Windows 7 ultimate on a PC (Intel Core-i5, GA-H97, 8GB RAM, 120 SSD for system, 1TB for data), and Photoshop CC 2014, we have a problem:
When trying to add a picture to a new Photoshop document we get the following error message: "Could not place, because the scratch disks are full".
On C: (the SSD) there is 70GB free space, on D: there is 900GB free space.
I've defined both disks as scratch disks, then tried to define either of the disks as scratch disk - nothing helped!
Could you please help us ASAP?
Thanks in advance.

Good day!
Have you restarted Photoshop after changing the Performance Preferences?
Using the System drive as Scratch Disk is not prudent if it can be avoided.
Please read this:
http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-performance-photoshop-cs4-cs5.html
Regards,
Pfaffenbichler

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?

What does it mean by scratch disk full?

Hi
can someone help me with my photoshop
every time i try to save something it tells me that my Scratch disk is full.
what does that mean and how to do solve it?

Use Photoshop menu Edit>Preferences>Performance add additional scratch space. Then stop and restart Photoshop. It means the disk you have Photoshop scratch space on has filled up. Photoshop can gobble lots of scratch disk when your using PS. When you close down the space will be returned to you system.

Can I use Win Xp as a scratch disk?

Just a quickie - Illustrator cs3 is on my apple mac. But I run Bootcamp and have win XP edition on my partition (this is not the same as parallels where you can switch between operating systems without restarting) bootcamp you have to restart the mac. But in the preferences under scratch disks it seems to give me the option of win xp in the drop down dialogue to use as a scratch disc.
Thankyou

Not too technical at all.
Scratch Space is used to store common document data like Document size, Color Mode, etc.. data that can be retrieved quicky when needed.
It is set aside when you launch Illustrator, then deleted when you quit Illustrator.
(Photoshop works similarly)

Scratch Disk Preferences

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