How To Fix The “Scratch Disks Are Full” Error In Photoshop

The “Scratch Disks Full” error in Photoshop typically occurs when your computer has no free memory space to store temporary Photoshop files. When this error occurs, Photoshop either crashes or won’t load at all.

There are several things you can do to fix this “scratch disk full” error in Photoshop This includes allowing Photoshop to use more RAM and deleting temporary files to free up memory space.

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Free up memory space on your computer

When the above error occurs, the first thing to do is delete all unnecessary files from your computer. This will free up space in your memory that Photoshop can then use to store temporary files.

Check your storage on Windows

1. Open the Settings app.

2. On the next screen, click System.

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3. Select “Storage” to view the storage information for your computer.

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4. You will see how much memory it takes. This will help you decide what to remove.

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Check your storage on a Mac

1. Click the Apple logo in the upper left corner and choose About This Mac.

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2. Click “Storage” at the top and select “Manage”.

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3. It will show you what content is using up how much space and also suggest recommendations for freeing up memory.

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Delete Photoshop temporary files

Photoshop creates and stores temporary files in your storage. These files can be safely deleted after you close Photoshop This will help you recover some of the memory.

1. Press the Windows + R keys at the same time to open Run, type the following into it, and press Enter.

   % temp%

2. When the temp folder opens, locate the files named Photoshop or PST.
3. Right-click these files and select Delete.

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4. Right-click the trash bin on your desktop and select Empty Trash.

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5. On Mac, use Spotlight to find temporary files and delete them.

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Change Scratch Disk at startup

If you’ve assigned multiple scratch disks to Photoshop, you can switch between them when you start Photoshop This solution works great when Photoshop won’t open due to a “scratch disk full” error.

1. In Windows, start Photoshop, press and hold the Ctrl and Alt keys on at the same time.

2. On a Mac, open Photoshop and hold down the Command and Option keys at the same time.

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3. Select a new scratch disk from the Start drop-down menu and click OK.

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Change the scratch drive in Photoshop

By default, Photoshop only uses your operating system disk as its scratch disk. If you have multiple disks or partitions, you can force Photoshop to use them and avoid the scratch disks full error.

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1. Start Photoshop on your computer.

2. Click the Photoshop menu at the top, choose Preferences, and choose Performance.

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3. Enables and disables scratch disks in a scratch disk partition.

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Disable Photoshop AutoRecover

Photoshop automatically saves your files as you work with them, but this increases the amount of memory it uses on your computer. If autorecovery save isn’t helpful, you can turn it off to save space on scratch disks.

1. Launch Photoshop on your computer.

2. Click Photoshop at the top, select Preferences and choose File Handling.

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3. Uncheck the “Automatically save recovery information every” checkbox.

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Let Photoshop use more RAM

One way to fix scratch disk problems in Photoshop is to allow Photoshop to use more RAM This will allow it to store more temporary files in RAM on your scratch disks.

1. Open Photoshop on your computer.

2. Click a Photoshop option at the top, choose Preferences, and choose Performance.

3. In the right pane, you will see a box that says Allow Photoshop In the box next to this option, enter the amount of RAM you want to use in Photoshop Then click “OK”.

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Delete Photoshop Cache Files

Each time you make changes to an image in Photoshop, the old unmodified version of your image is saved as a cache file on your computer. These files grow over time and start to take up too much space in your memory.

You can clear these cache files to possibly fix the scratch disk error, but at the cost of not being able to undo changes for your image.

1. Access Photoshop on your computer.
2. Click the Edit menu at the top, select Clear, and select All. This will delete all Photoshop cache files.

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Reset Values ??for Crop Tool

The crop tool in Photoshop lets you crop photos to a specified size. If you choose the wrong units when specifying size, say by choosing centimeters instead of pixels, you end up making your image very large.

This image is consuming a large amount of memory, which causes the “Scratch disks full” error in Photoshop

1. Open the crop tool in Photoshop and remove all values ??from the specified fields.
2. When entering any values, use pixels as the unit whenever possible.

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Defragment your hard drive

It’s worth defragmenting your scratch disk in Windows to get persistent memory space for using Photoshop This should help you get rid of the scratch disk error in the application.

1. Search for Defrag in the Start menu and click on Defragment and Optimize Drives.
2. On the next screen, you will see your hard disk partitions. Select the one you are using as your scratch disk and click the “Optimize” button.

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Reset Photoshop Preferences

If you’ve made a lot of changes to Photoshop settings, one or more of these changed options might be causing the problem. Restoring Photoshop‘s defaults should fix that for you.

1. Close Photoshop on your computer.
2. Press and hold Shift + Ctrl + Alt (Windows) or Shift + Command + Option (Mac) and launch Photoshop
3. You will be asked if you want to delete the Photoshop preferences file. Click Yes to delete the files.

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How did you fix the scratch disks full error in Photoshop? Tell us and our readers in the comments below.

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