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macrumors 6502
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I am doing some photoshop work and it will not let me save or change sizes or anything now because it says my "scratch disk" is full. What is that and how can I empty it. I restarted my computer and then things worked, but it would be great if I could do it without having to restart because it is only letting me do about 6 pictures before it stops up. Thanks for any quick help you can give!
 
Your scratch disk is where Photoshop writes temporary files while processing images. These files can get quite sizable -- up to 4gb and sometimes larger.

In Photoshop, your boot disk is set as the default scratch disk -- if it's getting full-ish then Photoshop will be running out of space to do its thing. OSX will also be writing swap files to the disk as well... you set the scratch disk in Pshop's preferences.

You can clear the scratch files by going Edit>Purge>All but it will clear your History states as well, so undoing actions will not be possible.

Best thing to do is archive some work to clear some space on your HD or get an additional HD -- internal or external.
 
an external hard drive is handy for this situation......you can use it for a scratch disk as well as to back up your data
 
do externals work well as scratch disks? I have an external firewire drive and would love anything that makes photoshop even faster. I have plenty of space on my only internal drive. Should i use that one, or use my external (which has not nearly as much space since i backup to it) to optimize performance?

[i believe that both drives are 7200rpm drive...i would love to get a 15k rpm dedicated scratch disk, but i'm not sure how much faster it would make things, and cost would be an issue, too- they are not cheap]
 
Blue Velvet said:
Best thing to do is archive some work to clear some space on your HD or get an additional HD -- internal or external.

You mean the 500 mb or so left free on my G3 500 iBook isn't enough...
🙄 I guess I'll just try to get this project done anyway I can and see what comes in the end of summer as far as deals (cram and jam please!!!).

Thanks for the tips.
 
tobefirst said:
do externals work well as scratch disks? I have an external firewire drive and would love anything that makes photoshop even faster. I have plenty of space on my only internal drive. Should i use that one, or use my external (which has not nearly as much space since i backup to it) to optimize performance?

[i believe that both drives are 7200rpm drive...i would love to get a 15k rpm dedicated scratch disk, but i'm not sure how much faster it would make things, and cost would be an issue, too- they are not cheap]

i think your computer's connection to the internal drive will allow it to communicate faster with the internal drive than to the external drive which will use either a firewire or usb connection.....so even if they're both 7200rpm drives, the internal will be faster......at least that's what I've read on these forums
 
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