Scratch disk?

I just recently took my puter up to the local whiz bang to add more ram so things would work a little faster. He says I have 4 gb ram. So WHY after I edit 6-8 pictures now, photoshop comes up with this crappy little saying "could not perform action, scratch disk is full" or "memory is all used up". I NEVER had those sayings before I had the extra ram added. Did he screw me over? I've heard of scratch disk before but never had to know what I needed it for or much anything else about it either. I need educated so I can go back up there and tell him all about it. I'm thinking he charged me about $130. I looked up my system properties and it says" 75 total gigs, 46 gigs free. External hard drive 465 total gigs, 421 free. Ram is 2.67 ghz, 1.75 gb. Someone tell me what I need to know so I can fix this thing up. Also, its not when I am trying to size something for the web either. Its usually after I get done with editing and just when my next move would be to save.

On a totally different note - I'm doing something wrong with my lights. I have one giant softbox, like 3x4' that is my key light, and 1 smaller softbox 24x24 or 36x36 that I use for my fill. The fill sits right behind me or right beside me as I shoot. I use the big one feathered (maybe not enough?), plus a hair light that shoots down and behind the subject. What I hate is the front of my drops are so bright! The back is nice and darker like I like it, but wowza, the front is really bright, and it really shows up on Sweet Apple, or black, or even my new mismatch blue one. I spend a lot of hours in ps trying to tone that bright part down. I even tried blocking light from the key but I guess I don't know how to do that. Maybe its just so big that the light spilled around what I was trying to use to block it. I wanted a full length shot part of the time, so blocking it wouldnt have actually worked anyway. What can I do or should do?

I'm assuming you have a PC, is it your C drive that's 75GB with 46GB free or is thatthe totals for all your internal storage? By default Photoshop's scratch disk is drive C:. It's where the history of your edits is stored along with all the other temporary information Photoshop uses.

I've read somewhere that the scratch disc should not be the same drive as the software where possible. I've set my PC to use my remote hard drive for the scratch disc. There's plenty of room for it to act like a hooligan without crowding the PC.

Its possible to increase the size/space allocated to the scratch disc. Maybe a short term solution would be to tell your operating system to give it more?

XP? Vista?

True. You should move yours & see if it helps.

You should ask that in Small Flash and Studio Lighting & include an image or two to illustrate the problem.

I have plenty of room on my external hard drive. Uhm, how do you move your scratch disk to the external drive? Windows XP.

Or Edit > Preferences > Plug-ins & Scratch Disks (CS2)

Correction to my first post, Photoshop uses the Startup Disk by default (not necessarily the C drive)

Careful using an external disk, a USB 1.x drive may slow down Photoshop as the transfer rate is far less than your internal drive

Also,
If you hold down the Control+Alt (Windows), Command+Option (Mac) keys at launch time the Scratch Disk Preferences dialog will appear. You can choose to change your scratch disk preferences using this dialog.


Resetting Preferences at Launch Time
If you would like to reset all of your Photoshop preferences, simultaneously hold down the Control+Alt+Shift (Windows)

anonyymi wrote in post #6528279
Or Edit > Preferences > Plug-ins & Scratch Disks (CS2)

Correction to my first post, Photoshop uses the Startup Disk by default (not necessarily the C drive)

Careful using an external disk, a USB 1.x drive may slow down Photoshop as the transfer rate is far less than your internal drive

Well said _ don't use an external drive. You need a dedicated separate internal drive for scratch disk, for best performance.

Aarrrrggghhhhhhhhhhhhh​h, I went home at lunch and changed it to my external drive. Also called Whizzo but he wasn't in so I left a message. Oh well, it will be easy to change it back to the internal drive. Guess I'll look into seeing if I can get a dedicated internal drive for the scratch disk.

Ive not noticed any decrease in performance times using my remote hard drive for the scratch disc. But then its ten times the size of the PC's and way faster as well!

You know I had this problem one day a couple years ago. I had not changed a thing configuration wise and would get the same error message that you do. After about two or three hours of thinking and messing with things I traced the problem back to a cropping issue. For instance I had been cropping to 800 inches x 800 inches as opposed to 800 pixels by 800 pixels. This was creating HUGE files and photoshop did not like that very much.

This is just my similar experience. Maybe it helps, maybe not. It's worth a thought.

Also, its good to have an internal SSD for your scratch disk. Whoa did that help my performance.

See this Adobe document for Photoshop RAm & scratch disk use

http://www.adobe.com …ebase/index.cfm​?id=322829

If you call ADOBE customer service they will tell you
1)Do not use an external drive as a scratch disk - it is slower than anything internal
2)Place a check mark next to ALL internal drives for a scratch disk - not just a single drive or an "unused drive"

I had an unused 10000rpm drive and three others with only the 10000 checked and was told to check all four drives and the software will chose the most efficient (all four internal) and not check the 2 external

BeckyMax wrote in post #6527485
He says I have 4 gb ram. did he screw me over? Ram is 2.67 ghz, 1.75 gb.

This is mine after installing 2 gigs of ram. I'd say I would definately be calling Mr. Whizzo

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