scratch disk is almost full

JJ
Posted By
Jim_Jordan
Sep 7, 2008
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952
Replies
24
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Closed
Defrag is rarely a problem on Macs.

This comment is misleading, especially in this forum. OSX automatically defrags files smaller than 20 MB in the background. It appears that you are working with files larger than 20 MB so a defrag may be useful. Defrag is especially useful if a drive is nearly full.

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=16236> Apple states:

Defragment your disk drive! A badly fragmented drive impacts performance.

Also see:
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375>

And here is some general info from Adobe that includes a note about defragging on Mac: < http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=31 7280>

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MN
Michael_N_Wolff
Sep 7, 2008
Thanks for all your help.

It looks like I have 178.5 GB available as that is what displays on the bottom of the finder window. As photoshop only requires a minimum of 320 MB of free disk space, shouldn’t the amount of space left on my hard drive be more than adequate? Do you feel it is necessary to get a second external hard drive?

I have successfully defragged my hard drive.
JJ
Jim_Jordan
Sep 7, 2008
Do you feel it is necessary to get a second external hard drive?

An internal drive would be ideal. General optimization tips, including the recommendation of a separate scratch drive, are more fully explained in the link above. (and now below)

< http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=31 7280>
MN
Michael_N_Wolff
Sep 7, 2008
Thanks a lot, Jim. Do you think your 500 GB SATA drive would work well with an older vintage Power PC G5 twin tower from May 2004?
L
Lundberg02
Sep 7, 2008
If you keep your hard drive below 60% you don’t need defrag. You keep it below 60% to keep it fast. Mac OS X does not throw files against the wall to see where they land the way Windows does.
MN
Michael_N_Wolff
Sep 7, 2008
When you say if I keep my hard drive below 60% what do you mean? Do you mean below 60% full? Thanks. Sorry for my ignorance.
R
Ram
Sep 8, 2008
Do you mean below 60% full?

Yes.
R
Ram
Sep 8, 2008
I’ve had a dedicated 160 GB internal drive as my primary Photoshop scratch disk for years, and it has never been fragmented at all. If you have a crash or something and Photoshop did not clear the scratch for some reason, you’ll know. Just keep checking the drive after such a crash.
L
Lundberg02
Sep 8, 2008
"The file I am currently working on in photoshop displays under scratch 1.35/2.05G."

What does this mean?
L
Lundberg02
Sep 8, 2008
You’re getting a lot of advice here, some good, some irrelevant. Dedicated scratch drive, good.
Keep your disks less than 60% full, good.
More RAM, good.
Photoshop empties your scratch on closure, good.

After you get this done, if you still have a problem, something else is wrong.
MN
Michael_N_Wolff
Sep 8, 2008
Yes, I appreciate everyone’s input and am getting an education from your responses. I am kind of a dumb artist, good at producing realistic effects in photoshop but dumb when it comes to technical issues with my computer and what photoshop needs to run efficiently.

I no longer remember what I meant when I posted: "The file I am currently working on in photoshop displays under scratch 1.35/2.05G."

I know when I click the triangle at the bottom of the document and choose image size, it currently says Doc 38.M/451.4M.

I am no longer getting any messages about the scratch disk being almost full, but still want to look into installing more RAM and installing a second internal hard drive.
L
Lundberg02
Sep 8, 2008
Just like the "superb German engineering" of a Mercedes, defragging a Mac is a solution to a problem you shouldn’t have in the first place.
If you keep your big HD half empty you will never have a drive related speed problem or a contiguous file size problem. In Windows files are scattered everywhere and if you don’t defrag some application will quit because there isn’t a contiguous file space big enough.
In twelve years in this forum and its predecessors, I have NEVER seen a problem whose answer was defragging.
There is no excuse for not moving stuff off your HD to an archive somewhere.
JJ
Jim_Jordan
Sep 8, 2008
You’re getting a lot of advice here, some good, some irrelevant

I would suspect that the irrelevant advice is coming from Lundberg, who is incapable of recognizing this blatant statement from Adobe and continues to argue simply for the sake or argument:

For the best performance, you should set the primary scratch disk to a defragmented hard drive that is not running the OS, and that has plenty of unused space and fast read/write speeds (rather than a network drive or removable media such as a Zip drive).

< http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=31 7280>
JJ
Jim_Jordan
Sep 8, 2008
In twelve years in this forum and its predecessors, I have NEVER seen a problem whose answer was defragging.

In the countless years I have been on this forum, I have seen Lundberg report many problems <http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?128@@.3bca10cf> on his own computer that others cannot reproduce. I would not trust Lundberg’s experience, especially when his comments here directly contradict both Apple’s and Adobe’s tech support docs.

Maybe Lundberg can post a screen shot of his own disk’s fragmentation to prove he is already fully defragmented. I believe the trial of iDefrag will let him do this. The interface looks like this <http://www.coriolis-systems.com/img/iDefrag/idefrag-ss1.jpg>.

Disk defragmentation is not the cure here. It simply helps to keep your drive healthy and organized, especially if you are working without a separate scratch drive. The main advice everyone appears to be giving, even the uninformed and misguided, is that a separate scratch drive will help.
B
Buko
Sep 8, 2008
iDefrag does not work with Western Digital drives
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Sep 8, 2008
Installing a second HD; partitioning it and then reserving the FIRST partition as a dedicated Photoshop Scratch disk; is the most important step you can take if you want to get decent performance out of Photoshop.

Having sufficient RAM may be important — but a having a separate Scratch Disk is even more so.
L
Lundberg02
Sep 9, 2008
"Jim Jordan", defragging is ridiculous on a Mac, but essential on a PC.
JM
J_Maloney
Sep 9, 2008
Silly.
JJ
Jim_Jordan
Sep 9, 2008
"Lundberg02", what is ridiculous is someone that feels some bizarre need to follow me to various threads simply to debate. The problem you fail to realize is that you are not really debating me. I’m just quoting what Apple and Adobe recommend. Arguing what the computer and software makers recommend makes you appear ridiculous.

"The file I am currently working on in photoshop displays under scratch
1.35/2.05G."

What does this mean?

Lundberg, to answer your question, this means Michael is looking at either the info panel or the values that appear in the bottom left of every Photoshop document window. You can learn more about this in the Help section. This value has been available in Photoshop for many years.

So how does Lundberg02 explain why a full scratch disk warning appears when the drive has plenty of space?

Let’s see what the informed folk say:

It is also possible to get the "scratch disk is full" error, even if the scratch disk drive has free space. This is because Photoshop requires contiguous, unfragmented free space on the scratch disk drive. If you are getting the "scratch disk is full" error message and your scratch disk drive does show a good amount of free space, you may need to run a disk defragmentation utility. [source < http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/f/scratchdisk.htm>]

Your primary scratch disk should be your fastest hard disk; make sure it has plenty of defragmented space available… Drives with scratch disks should be defragmented regularly. [source < http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/10.0/help.html?con tent=WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-7489.html>]

f) decided to buy Idefrag and try to see if fragmentation could be an issue. My drive was very fragmented … improved speed very significant[source <http://adobeforums.com/webx?128@@.59b62259>]

The comment of ‘Conventi[on]al wisdom is that Mac drives don’t need defragging’ at the Photoshop LR forum linked above makes me wonder how the idea of avoiding defragmentation tools could ever be considered conventional or wise…and who is responsible for spreading such misinformation that Lundberg and others apparently fall for blindly. Apple.com makes no claim that defragging is something to be ignored. They even advertise a defrag app < http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ drivegenius.html> on apple.com.

So "Lundberg02", if that is your real name, why don’t you explain what authority or resource led you to such an erroneous belief about how to maintain your computer? Do you have tech docs to share from Apple or Adobe or are you simply here to stir up trouble?

Don’t we all like to cite Macfixit.com <http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070301091515843>?
MN
Michael_N_Wolff
Sep 9, 2008
So Jim, when I click the triangle at the bottom of the document and choose Document sizes it says 38.5M/573.6M.

I know the first number is the actual size of my document. What is the second number? (573.6M) Is that the actual amount of space that is left for photoshop to use on my scratch disk?

My Finder window says that 185.11 GB are available.

I have run idefrag, but still occasionally get "the scratch disk is almost full" message. Seems like I really have to get that second hard drive and some more memory.
JM
J_Maloney
Sep 9, 2008
The first number is the size of your doc if it was flattened. The second is the size of your doc with layers/ smart objects/ etc.

Is that the actual amount of space that is left for photoshop to use on my scratch disk?

You should be able to access that number using the triangle you mention. Scratch used/ scratch total.

J
MN
Michael_N_Wolff
Sep 9, 2008
Thanks J.

My scratch numbers then are 1.43G/1.98G

I guess 1.98G is not enough available space on the scratch disk.
JJ
Jim_Jordan
Sep 9, 2008
If you have already defragmented your drive and you truly have 178.5GB free, then there is some other reason for a scratch size warning. This warning could be a bug or a memory mismanagement issue with Photoshop. Not everyone here is running 10.5.4 to know and experience all the possible issues. CS3 was released before the advent of OSX 10.5. Try running Photoshop as another system user (create a new OSX account, log yourself out, login as the new user and retry what you were doing with Photoshop) to see if there is some corruption to settings on your system. You can also browse this forum’s FAQs to see how to reset Photoshop preferences.

A free app like MacJanitor or Onyx can also clean up your system cache.

A google search for "scratch disk is almost full" reveals a few others that apparently have hard drive space but are getting the same error.
JJ
Jim_Jordan
Sep 9, 2008
I guess 1.98G is not enough available space on the scratch disk

I believe this is reflecting your RAM, not HD space.

Full explanation of these numbers is here < http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/10.0/help.html?con tent=WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-7508.html>.
MN
Michael_N_Wolff
Sep 9, 2008
Thanks, Jim. I will try resetting photoshops preferences, logging in as another user and running MacJanitor or Onx.

I am wondering what the M measures as in document size 38.5M? Is that megabytes?

What does the G mean in the sizes measured under scratch sizes?

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