If you use Photoshop on the Mac regularly, then you should be familiar with a full scratch disk problem. Anyway, whether you already have got a message about this, or you are just reading useful information to be prepared beforehand, we have effective tips to simplify your life and save your precious time. In our short guide, you will find the main hints on emptying a scratch disk in Photoshop without problems. It’s easy to deal with an annoying error message and keep your computer working on its highest performance.
Understanding the Scratch Disk Problem
Before we start talking about emptying a scratch disk, let’s explain what it is and why Photoshop needs this thing. When the graphic design application is working, it creates many temporary documents with your projects that are saved on RAM. But when the app needs more storage, it saves files on the part of the device’s hard drive. Any scratch disk is temporary storage for Photoshop that provides it with additional amount of space.
What Is the Needed Amount of a Scratch Disk?
If you’re working with a huge number of photos in a graphic editor, you need to have enough space for a scratch disk to save all the needed files. Automatically, a graphic design program Photoshop reserves around 6 GB as a scratch disk on the main disk, and 1 GB on a non-system disk. Of course, it also matters what you are doing in Photoshop and what your needs are. Check that you have enough free space on your hard drive before starting working to prevent any errors.
Solving the Problem Successfully
Usually, the notification about scratch disk error appears when Photoshop cannot save temporary files. In this case, the application crashes and cannot be launched again. There are several ways to solve the problem. It includes removing temporary documents and allowing the app to use more RAM on the device.
- Remove temporary documents from the application. As we already explained, Photoshop saves files with all the projects constantly and keeps documents on the hard drive. You may remove them from the computer and free up some memory.
- Switch on another scratch disk. You can create several scratch disks and switch between them on the application startup. This is a good decision when you are getting the error about a full disk constantly.
- Disable the auto-recovery in the application. Photoshop saves all the temporary documents automatically, but you may disable this and save free space without problems.
- Allow the application to use more RAM. It’ll help to save more documents on a scratch disk and prevent the persistent error.
- Remove cache files from Photoshop. When you’re making any changes to the photo in a graphic editor, this image is saved on the Mac as a cache. Needless to say, over time the scratch disk is clogged with such images. You need to empty the cache to solve the problem with a full disk error. Remember that after this, you will not be able to recover anything, so if some images should be saved, it’s better to move them to the external drive or use a flash drive.
- Reset the application’s preferences. If you’ve done many changes in the Photoshop preferences, this can be a reason that causes problems. Try to set default preferences to solve the problem successfully.
- Reset the values of the Crop tool. When you’re cropping many photos in Photoshop, you do it with the Crop tool. Check out that you’ve set the size in pixels because if it’s specified in centimeters, your images will be very large. Needless to say, this will lead to taking a huge amount of space to save temporary pictures during your work.
Do you need more useful hints? Feel free to read some detailed steps on emptying a scratch disk and recovering Mac’s performance even if you’re working in Photoshop. Don’t let this application eat up too much free space. Remember that you can control it easily with our simple and effective article!
