Photoshop Elements :: How To Undo A Scratch Disk Change
Nov 14, 2012
I've been editing very large images with many layers recently, and I noticed disk performance issues - so I thought that by changing my preferences to set the scratch disk to the D drive, I might improve things (more available space, not competing with Windows disk usage, etc).
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Now when I launch PE, it throws up an error: 'Could not open a scratch file because the file is locked. Use the properties command in the Windows Explorer to unlock the file' and refuses to open.  However, it doesn't say what file it's trying to open, so I don't know how to fix it - and I can't get into PE to change the preference back to the C drive.
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Unfortunately the preferences file isn't ASCII so I can't edit it manually. Added a half-hour later: By simply removing all the setup files I can get back into PE, but I'd still like to know what folder(s) and/or file(s) PE is trying to create on the D drive, so that I can see if there's any performance improvement.
All my MACINTOSH versions of Photoshop - S5, Elements 10, Elements 11 - display the opening start screen, but ABORT THE LAUNCH of the EDITOR with the error message:
"Could not open scratch file because of disk error."  "Could not initialize Photoshop Elements because the preferences file was invalid (it has been deleted)"  I have cleaned up my external disks so that they all have at least 100GB of free space  How can I correct this so that I can recover the Preferences, re-establish the Scratch Disk, and launch the Photoshop Editor?
I have Photoshop Elements 10. It worked until I upgraded to Mountain Lion.Now when I try to open it, I get two error messages: 1: "Could not open a scratch file because the disk is not available." 2: "Could not initialize Photoshop Elements because the disk is not available."
I'm using Elements 6 on a 10 year old iMac. Great results until recently receiving message stating "Scratch disk (or startup disk) is full. Remove files to make more room. I get that and manual and iMac
Windows 7, had everything working fine. Added SSD and installed system from scratch on SSD. Old drive is now my second drive. Â Trying to put the scratch disk on the second (old) drive to reduce wear on the SSD. But every time I do, I get the disk error message and it erases all my settings (so annoying!) Â I figure it's a permissions thing since I've had to deal with that already to some degree, but I don't know how to fix it since I don't know where adobe is trying to save the scratch file.
I have recently bought an SSD (sandisk 120GB) which i have installed windows on. i have another 500gb internal drive which is empty and am wondering whether i should install photoshop on the 500gb drive and put the scratch disk on the SSD or the other way round.
how an SSD differs from a regular hard drive, there is no drop in performance when your stratch disk is assigned to the same SSD containing your Photoshop app.. I heard this setup is much faster than the conventional setup of having your app and scratch disk on separate hard drives.
I have just built my new rig (Asus p9x79 pro, 32GB 1600Mhz DDR3, Intel 3820, old GTX285 1GB, Win7 pro.....many hard drives ) as I am working on a very big project producing 440x240cm200ppi digital drawings to be installed as lightbox artworks at the same size.  My old system just could not cope with the demands I was putting on it as It only had 12gb RAM. I have two scratch disks set up x1 30gb SSD (dedicated) and x1 240gb SSD ( has other stuff on it with 75gb free ). I am also using Photoshop CS5 Extended (updated) with RAM usage set to 80% (23976).  While I realise PS will still make use of the scratch disk despite the amount of RAM I was shocked to see the first drive (30gb) was almost full with 5gb space left when I loaded the PSB file with x9 layers. Looking at the meta data in Bridge it tells me the file size is 6.90GB with pixel dimensions of 34646x18898@200ppi. Windows reports that I am only using 20GB of my 32GB..  Shouldn't PS be using more RAM before going to the slower reads on a SSD? Windows Task Manager tells me I have 8150 RAM cached, 12310 RAM Available and 4215 RAM Free. If Photoshop is not using the 12GB would it be wise to make a 9GB RAM DISK for an addition boost...not even sure if that would work, but, I hate the feeling of having all that RAM and 1/3 not being used.
I have a Mac Pro, with more than one HD. When I try to assign the other drive as the Scratch disk, and relaunch PS, I get the dreaded "can't access disk". I then have to remove prefs. and my Scratch disk no longer appears.
can explain the process to make a scratch disk for Photoshop cs3.I have a graphics company and bought cs3 it is working well but i am going to add another disk in my computer for this and need info to set this disk up.
my computer got a lil virus, I had to system restore. Virus gone, BUT, seems as though my Photoshop kind of reset itself. Becuase when I opened it, the template was different (I used to have only 2 windows on the right, it reset itself to open with 4 windows) and when I used to create a new file the background was the transparent checkered pattern, and now it's just a plan white background, so something obviously reset.
THat's cool, no problem there. So I go to create a new photo, and I use a VERY simple too, I use the Paint Bucket to fill a 500x500 image, Photoshop has a lilttle load bar come up so it can LOAD to fill my little space, and if i let it sit, it will eventually say "Scratch Disk is Full".
Now, I've gone online to see how to fix that. I've found multiple FAQ sites. And this is what I've done to still no avail:
1. I've gone into Preferences and set the Scratch Disk location to my C:// drive that it previously was.
2. Set it so that 100% of my RAM can be used for Photoshop
3. Defragmented my C:// Drive
4. Searched for any ~PSD temp files, my computer said it found none.
A pop up box appears saying that the selected scratch disks are almost full, and there are 4 drop down boxes: First, Second, Third, Fourth.
With the "First", with either Startup or C drive selected, photoshop won't load.
This pop up box has never appeared before.
So, when I press ok on this box, photoshop continues to load for a few seconds then it states that it cannot continue loading because there was an error that it couldn't recover from!
There are no PST temporary files located on my computer,
And it isn't the "working with large image" problem because I don't even GET to open photoshop in the first place!
I am now working with 10megapixel images, just basic post processing i.e. saturation, curves, and sharpening.
My question is as follows.
I have a 1.6ghz dell laptop, with 1gb ram, and 80gb hd with about 32gb free. Sometimes when batch processing (50 to 100 photos) at once, Ill get the scratch disk full error. I know its not a good idea to have the scratch and OS on the same drive, but not much I can do about it. I'm thinking about getting another gig of ram to bring me up to a total of 2gb, and a 500gb external hard drive. I can move the photos (about 20gigs worth) to the external, then i'd have about 50gigs free on my internal. I know an external is not the best for scratch, but again it will only be if I use the 50gb on my internal first. I will eventually have to get another HD anyway for these huge images.
So will a total of 2gb ram, 50gigs free on internal for primary scratch, and the remainder of my 500gb external for secondary scratch, give me a noticeable improvement?
How much hard drive space should be allocated to photoshop? We are working with files at times exceeding 6GB. We have 32GB of RAM and a few hard drives, internal and external. Second: the size of my Documents folder is no more than 250gb and the capacity of the system hard drive is 500. What else could possibly take up so much room? the programs take up about 50gb so im left with 200 missing GB?
I am on OSX10.6.8 with CS4 and CS5 (some of my actions only run on CS4, so I quit and launch back and forth). Â I had my CS 4 and 5 Scratch Prefs set to a specific scratch partition on another local disk where I had a small partition dedicated towards it. I was doing some disk maintenance on that other disk and forget to go into CS and reset the scratch to the start-up disk. Now I cannot open CS4 or CS5 because it is looking for a scratch disk that does not exist. Â Is a complete re-install the only fix, or is there a command line or other way other way than a complete re-install?
Setup: - Photoshop CS6 13.0.4 (64bit) - MBP 15" retina (2,3Ghz intel Core i7) - OSX 10.8.5 Â I create designs for a websites. I work only on one file at a time. A real life example: 83MB in size and 2400X6000 in dimension. When I open the file and start editing, within minutes, all my RAM is used, plus my scratch disk uses a whopping 55GB. This is all the free space I have on a total of 200GB. Often, mac Finder crashes, so a hard reset is needed. Â I'm fully aware that a scratch disk can use a lot more then my 55GB. But, I don't do image editing, what I think is a large scratch disk user. And, I used to work with CS4 on an older mac with only 8GB of ram, and I never got a message about my scratch disk.
I'm trying to set up a time lapse project at work using CS5 and extendscript. I'm getting a scratch disk full error, only when I run the script. I do need to know where PS saves the scratch disk info, as my company limits my access to computer folders, so if PS is trying to write directly to the c drive, it might be getting blocked. If I know where the info is being written, I can make sure I have access. why I'm not getting the error message when not using the script. Just a simple resize throws the error.
From what I've read, the scratch disk in Photoshop is there so that if you become low on RAM, it will move data from the RAM to the allocated scratch disk...so why bother making that scratch disk the RAM when it'll just be going from the RAM...to the RAM?
I have not subscribed to the extended version and it ran out today now when I boot up cs6 the message is could not open a scratch file because the disk is not available.I can't get into adobe cs6 now
I just put PS CS2 on my laptop today (dell latitude d610 with win xp), and as soon as I started running it I ran into a Scratch Disk Full error... not by cropping or anything big... but just using the pen tool on a 500x500 72ppi file.
I've been using CS4 for the past week or so with no problems, but didn't want to fork out the ridiculous price to keep it past the trial, so decided to go with CS2 as I've used it on another computer of mine and the price was good.
Is it possible I could be getting this error because of old PS files that weren't fully removed? I did the uninstall of CS4 before I downloaded CS2 so ??? I also did install CS2 before but wouldn't allow me to activate it because it was already on another comp.
I also heard it could be because of a lack of memory on the drive I use for the scratch disks, but I have almost 10 gigs free on the drive I'm using as my secondary (c:), not sure about the one I have as primary (startup). I'm using that as primary because it was there as a default, though I'm not sure what it is. And I did try them vice versa as well and still got the error.
Lately when I try to crop an image in Photoshop CS2 (9.0.1) I get the message that the function could not be completed because the scratch disk was full.
I only have a "C" drive and I have over 15 gig free. I have optimized the hard drive and that didn't do anything . Can someone help me with this problem?
What does it mean when I try to open a file in photoshop and get a scratch disk error. And how do I stop it from keep hapening again. I try to solve it by purging out stuff.
It's about time I replaced my 5400RPM Drive for a 7200RPM unit. At the moment I have a partition used as Photoshop's Scratch disk. Just wondering if it would be wiser to keep the 5200RPm unit as a seperate scratch disk, or have a faster partition on the 7200RPM unit.
I've recently switched to a new pc with Vista-64. After installing my CS3 I tried to give it a test to see how it performs. Medium sized files run very fast on difficult filters such as Lens blur. But when I open a large file like 300mb and try to run a Lens Blur filter on it, things get very slow for this PC. I think it takes 3-4min to complete the task.
What also bothers me is CS3 is writing/using on a external HD that's not chosen to be used as a scratch disk. I noticed this as I see the blue lights get active on the WD external HD. Then I checked what's happaning in the disk going to my computer. When I look into the HD I see bunch TMP files written during this filter task. Same type of files (different sizes)are also seen in the dedicated scratch disk. Is it normal that CS3 will access other HD's eventhough they are not chosen as Scratch disks or is it there anything wrong with my CS3 or OS? Also I believe that I should get a better performance with my setup, anything you might suggest?
My computer: Gigabyte EX38T-DQ6 motherboard, Intel Core2 Extreme x9650, Vista 64-bit, 4GB DDR3 RAM, OS, other programs and CS3 located on 4 WD Raptor HD's configured as RAID 0+1, separate 70GB Raptor HD for scratch disk, all photo files are stored on 2 750GB Lacie HD's as RAID 1 and I have one WD external 2 TB HD for back up connected with Firewire800. This is the one that's being accessed by CS3.
