wilfredo Posted May 31, 2007 Share #1 Â Posted May 31, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) When doing post processing my PC is giving me a message that says: "Can't complete the comand "because the scratch disc is full." So trying to do any post processing on PSCS has become a real burden. I have to save constantly, close the file, and open it again to keep working. I've removed programs I don't need from the hard drive, but no change, and I also keep getting a message that says I need to free up some space even though it has 300 mgs of free space available. This only happens when working on 10 megapixel or 12 megapixel files. Any suggestions? I've already ordered a new hard drive that's 200 gbts. I trust that will solve the problem. I have the CS3 upgrade but won't be able to install it until I get the new hard drive. Â I save the files on an external hard drive. Â Â Cheers, Wilfredo Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted May 31, 2007 Posted May 31, 2007 Hi wilfredo, Take a look here Scratch Disc Full. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
brucek Posted May 31, 2007 Share #2 Â Posted May 31, 2007 Sounds like CS is trying to use a different drive for a scratch disk than what you think it should be using. I'm using a Mac and under Preferences (in CS3) you can choose which drive(s) are used for scratch disks. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
george_b Posted May 31, 2007 Share #3 Â Posted May 31, 2007 Sounds like CS is trying to use a different drive for a scratch disk than what you think it should be using. I'm using a Mac and under Preferences (in CS3) you can choose which drive(s) are used for scratch disks. I do the same with a P/C; 1 disc=programs, 1 disc=data & I also use a USB for a scratch disc as well to spread the load. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
farnz Posted May 31, 2007 Share #4 Â Posted May 31, 2007 Hi, Wilfredo, Â This simply means that you've run out of ram and filled up the area set aside for virtual memory (scratch discs) by PS - probably by default. (When your pc runs out of ram it uses a preset area on a hard drive and pretends that it's ram. Unfortunately because the pc has to write to the hard drive and read from the hard drive every time, its access time for virtual memory is much slower than it is for ram.) Â To change your scratch disc settings in PS go to the Edit menu>Preferences>Plugins and scratch discs, and select which drives you want your first second and third scratch discs set up on. If you haven't changed it you'll probably find that PS has set all the scratch discs to the same hard drive by default so it thinks (wrongly) that you've only got one disc whose scratch disc is full. It's normally recommended that for better performance you should have your second and third scratch discs on different drives from your first (and your PS application) Â You may also be running short on ram and there are two fixes for this: 1) buy more ram (yeah I know it's obvious but it makes a huge difference) 2) make sure that PS is able to use a decent chunk of your existing ram. By default PS only allows itself to use up to 50% of your existing ram and then it is forced to use VM (scratch discs) but you can easily change this conservative setting by going to Edit menu>Preferences>Memory & image cache, and in the mamory usage panel increase the percentage of memory used by Photoshop by typing in your desired percentage. I have increased mine to about 80% but be aware that when you're running PS in the background other applications may run slower because PS may have seized a large chunk of the memory. Â My final advice would be to maximise the amount of ram in your pc because ram is dirt cheap at the moment, but be sure to buy the same speed as your existing ram. If you have a spare coupla bucks and you don't have much ram in your machine already (say less than 500kB) then you might like to replace all your ram with the fastest ram that your pc can handle. If you need to know what type/speed of memory to buy there are a number of websites that will allow you to download a free software package that will look at your ram and tell you what you have. I've used Memory upgrades, graphics cards, flash media, and usb storage at Crucial.com before. Â Btw, when you've made the changes you'll need to restart PS but it'll pay you to reboot your pc too so it releases all the ram and VM and starts afresh. Â HTH, Pete. Â In Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilfredo Posted May 31, 2007 Author Share #5 Â Posted May 31, 2007 Pete: Â Thanks for the education. When I go home later I'll try your suggestions. It seems there are always new things to learn with computers. I had RAM problems before and upgraded but then recently, the scratch disc thing started up. Â Cheers, Wilfredo Benitez-Rivera Photography Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gepetto Posted May 31, 2007 Share #6 Â Posted May 31, 2007 Wilfredo, As the others have noted scratch disk problems involve HD space. The quickest solution if you are only using one HD is having enough free space on that drive as possible. Â A general rule of thumb especially for a drive that also harbors the System Software you should try to always have at least 10% free space. Some may argue 15% or more. From your earlier thread it sounds like you have less than 6GB. I think you said you only have 800MB left. If this is correct than freeing up space should greatly increase all the operations on your machine. Â There should be some life left in your Dimension 8200. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilfredo Posted May 31, 2007 Author Share #7 Â Posted May 31, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) I've just done what Pete suggested and it worked, I'm able to work now. I have gotten rid of lots of stuff on my hard drive and I'll be receiving a new one soon, so I should be good after that, at least for a while. Thank you all for the help, it's a learning process. Â Cheers, Wilfredo+ Benitez-Rivera Photography Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
farnz Posted May 31, 2007 Share #8 Â Posted May 31, 2007 Wilfredo, Â I'm glad that it worked out for you. Â Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gtmerideth Posted June 1, 2007 Share #9 Â Posted June 1, 2007 Wilfredo, Another helpful item is to emty your trash. g. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
george_b Posted June 1, 2007 Share #10 Â Posted June 1, 2007 Wilfredo,Another helpful item is to emty your trash. g. Not only that but general P/C housekeeping is also worthwhile; eg dumping temp files, defrag your discs, ensuring you don't have softward running in parallel which some venors like to do but many users are not aware, Norton tune-up, etc. George Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilfredo Posted June 1, 2007 Author Share #11 Â Posted June 1, 2007 Gary and George, Â Thanks for the tips. Â Wilfredo Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
augenschmaus Posted June 3, 2007 Share #12 Â Posted June 3, 2007 Wilfredo, for in-depth information on PS CS and its memory and scratch disk usage, here is a technical brief from Adobe: Adobe - TechNote : Memory allocation and usage (Photoshop CS). A related article, on PS CS2, has further suggestions regarding scratch disk size, partition, etc.: Adobe - TechNote : Memory allocation and usage (Photoshop CS2). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shootist Posted June 3, 2007 Share #13 Â Posted June 3, 2007 Wilfredo 300MB's of space on the hard drive is nothing. My PS CS2 or CS3 scratch disk is 700-1200 MB's (.7-1.2GB) when opening any file. PS like to reserve a large SD to start with. That way it doesn't have to expand it unless you do some very heavy editing. This is on a PC with 2GB of RAM and the useable RAM for PS set to 1300MB's. Â You need a second physical hard drive that you can place the scratch disk on. Away for the OS and the PS program folder. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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