Scratch disk suddenly full after making tiny adjustments to photoshop file

Whilst working on a photoshop file the space on my hard drive suddenly drops from 12 Gb to a few hundred megabites, even after minor adjustments!! I then cant save my progress as the scratch disks are full!!! Ive tried looking all over the web and cannot fix this problem. Im an architecture student and I have a deadline fast approaching!

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.

Similar Messages

  • Can't open tif file. "Scratch disks are full"

    Version: Photoshop CS5 12.0.4 64 bit
    Scratch Disk: 6.67 GB of available space on my scratch disk (C Drive). I've allocated 90% (2686 MB of my available 2984 MB of RAM to Photoshop).
    File I'm trying to open: 39 MB tiff file
    I have nothing else open in Photoshop and no other applications open. Even so, I get the message "Could not complete your request because the scratch disks are full" when I try to open the file ... yet when Photoshop itself opens, it still claims to have 6.67 gigs of available space. 
    The file I'm trying to open is a 39 meg tiff with a few smart objects in it.
    I just opened a 23 meg tiff with a few smart objects in it, with no problems.
    I just opened a 39 meg (same size) psd (no smart objects), with no problems.
    Why does this 39 meg tiff file cause Photoshop to say the scratch disk is full?
    Thanks in advance for your help!

    Welcome to the forum.
    As others have stated, the problem is most likely just a lack of HDD real estate, and as also mentioned, if your Windows Virtual Memory (Page File) is dynamically managed (the default setting),you probably have even less, that what is being reported.
    One major consideration is that a HDD begins to lose performance, when it reaches about 70%, and this is cumulative, in that the closer one gets to capacity, the slower the performance. Also, as one approaches capacity, the liklihood of a failure increases.
    Treat yourself to an additional HDD, clean up your boot disk, and many things will improve.
    Good luck,
    Hunt

  • After re-installing photoshop elements following a HD crash, i get the following message after clicking on PE icon, "could not initialize photoshop elements because the scratch disks are full".How can this problem be resolved?

    after re-installing photoshop elements following a HD crash, i get the following message after clicking on PE icon, "could not initialize photoshop elements because the scratch disks are full".How can this problem be resolved?

    dgrparker a écrit:
    photoshop element 2.0 - on windows 7. the program ran fine on the old HD, but this error popped up when I re-installed it on the new HD
    Elements 2.0 is an old version. The message may be due to the fact that your new HD is much bigger than your older one, and not due to the classical reasons:
    http://www.easyelements.com/scratch-disk-is-full.html

  • Scratch disks are full error, so photoshop paused....

    i received the scratch disks are full message while trying to save a large file. i hit okay, hoping there was enough space left to finish the save - alas, there wasn't.
    i quickly deleted some larger unused files, but photoshop is still 'paused'. when opening up the force quit menu it reads "photoshop (paused)" - i know i'll probably have to force quit and lose all of my progress... however, now that there is 18+gb free, is there a way to resume, or unpause, photoshop so it can finish the save?

    Hey. It's dicey at best, but you might be able to get out of it. If photoshop is still running, can you make a new document? If you can, hide photoshop, free up some space, then come back and make a tiny document, like 5x5 pixels. This will force a purge, and possibly let you deal with your important document. Since i don't hold a lot of hope for that working, here's a few tips to maybe avoid this in the future... Do you have more than one drive? If you don't, and you are doing any kind of serious photoshop work, you need to get one. This leads to the first rule: don't use your startup drive as a scratch disk. I have 3 other drives, each one set as a scratch, and the startup disk not specified at all. Another thing about PS's scratch system, is that it needs contiguous space to work properly. Another case for not using your startup volume, and also for getting an external, making it easier to defrag it once in a while.

  • 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

  • "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)

  • The error message "Scratch disk is full" when trying to create

    the error message "Scratch disk is full" when trying to create a image/logo in Photoshop CS6

    Hi Weed42,
    This has been discussed in the following forum links:
    http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1164997
    http://forums.adobe.com/message/4968658
    Let us know if this helps,
    Regards
    Gurleen

  • I am getting an error message that reads "Cannot ___ because the scratch disks are full."

    I have had Photoshop Elements 12 on my Macbook for less than a month (free Trial). For the past few days I keep getting an error message that says "Cannot ___ because the scratch disks are full. Can someone please tell me how to fix this problem?

    How much free space is there on the drive where PSE is installed?

  • Help scratch disk is Full (mac)

    Help please, Im using a macbook pro (10.8.4) and I can't use my CS6 because I keep getting the message scratch disk is full when it says I have 39.88g free on my hard drive

    Fresh Effects wrote:
    …I have 32.87GB free out of 83.23GB. I dont know what else I can delete
    I would not even think of considering to attempt to run Photoshop on that machine.  Sorry.
    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.

  • Scratch Disk is Full

    When I try to crop a picture, I am getting an error message that says my scratch disk is full.  I have ample space left on my hard drive, so how can I correct this issue?
    Thanks,
    Jennifer Laraia
    Message was edited by: PECourtejoie (email address removed to avoid spam)

    Hello!
    I don't know what version of Photoshop you are using (I'll post an example with Ps CS5, but it is similar in other versions), but I know a possible cure: check the units of the crop you are trying to perform on the image:
    Are you sure that you want to crop it (for instance) 800x600 INCHES, multiplied by 300 PPI? (creating a 144 megapixels image!)
    Set the unit to pixels, and you won't get that warning anymore, or change the PPI value to a smaller value.
    What happens exactly? Unlike a real world crop tool, Photoshop's can be used to increase the dimensions of a document, and cropping a 1280x720 pixels document in the way the crop tool is set in the first example would create a 24.000 x 18.000 pixels one!
    When you use the crop tool, it is also possible to make the document bigger by dragging the crop tool boundaries to the outside of the document. (make sure in this case that you increase the number of pixels to account for it.)

  • I have installed Photoshop element 12 trail version in my system and i worked also for some days but it given error that "cannot load default brushes because scratch disk is full " but scratch is 158GB free

    Hi,
    I have installed Photoshop element 12 trail version in my system and i worked also for some days but it given error that "cannot load default brushes because scratch disk is full " but scratch is 158GB free why whats the problem am not getting.

    That thread helped for a time.  But now it seems as though my computer is back to slow again.  But, some of the jargon is over my head as well.  Not sure I knew quoite everything they were talking about.  But thanks a lot for that, it helped I probably just need to reread it and follow the instructions again.  Thanks so much.

  • Error: "Scratch disk is full" when cropping an image

    Solution suggested by PECourtejoie.
    Issue: When you try to crop an image in Photoshop and enter width, height and resolution values in the crop options, you receive the error that the scratch disk is full and are unable to crop the image.
    Details: If you leave the crop options blank, you can crop the image successfully. This usually occurs because you left a resolution target in the options for the crop tool and it is attempting to resample your image to something bigger than your scratch disk can hold
    Solutions: Do one of the following:
    Solution 1: Clear the crop tool options.
    Click the Clear button on the crop tool options bar to remove previously entered measurements and the target resolution.
    Solution 2: Specify measurement units when cropping.
    Enter the desired measurement units in the width and height crop options. For example, enter 100px for pixels, or 1in for inches. Remove any text from the resolution field.
    Solution 3: Set the default measurement units.
    To set the default measurement units:
    1. Choose Edit > Preferences > Units & Rulers (Windows) or Photoshop > Preferences > Units & Rulers (Mac OS).
    2. Select a measurement unit for Type under the Units section of the Preferences dialog box. For example, select Pixels.
    3. Click OK.
    Message was edited by: PECourtejoie

    Thanks!
    You did credit me, but the text you picked comes from a Knowledgebase article... no one hurt, just setting things straight...

  • Could not complete your request because the scratch disks are full

    i have more than enough disk space in my PC
    not sure at all what this message means: "could not complete your request because the scratch disks are full"
    please help
    Thank you

    It means that the operation you tried to do would have filled all of your scratch drives.
    Check your Photoshop preferences to make sure you have the drives assigned correctly.  And double check your settings (like the crop tool with a high resolution specified) for the particular operation that fails -- most likely it is trying to create something huge that would fill your scratch drives.

  • Could not complete your request because scratch disk are full

    Everytime I try ti crop a image I get this.
    Could not complete your request because scratch disk are full.
    Thanks in advance

    You entered a resolution in the crop settings, and Photoshop is now resampling the cropped area as you instructed -- creating a document too big for your scratch disk.   Take the resolution out, or reset the crop tool.

  • Scratch disk is full on Photoshop CS6 but I can't close Photoshop as I would lose all of the work I've done.

    I've been working on a drawing for awhile and a little error message popped up saying my scratch disks are full. I've tried multiple things but I apparently need to restart Photoshop for those things to kick in. I can't restart it as almost all of my work will be gone. Any help is appreciated.

    You can purge the swap files etc. from the Edit menu. Try that. Otherwise there is simply no way to salvage the situation once PS runs out of memory, virtual and real one...
    Mylenium

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