clearing off scratch disks with out restarting?

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Level 3

565 points

clearing off scratch disks with out restarting?

ok, so i am running out of room on my HD, i have 15 gb im playing with right now (load pics on the machine then move older ones over to my external back up) but as of right now i cannot manage any more free space than 15 gb. i also cannot get my hd upgraded for a few weeks and of course i need to be running a lot of Photoshop and it is kill my disk space (keep getting "Scratch disks are full" and "your start up disk is almost full". my 15 gb was taken up with scratch disk junk and my machine totally froze up and had to hard power off.

is there a way to clear off the scratch disks with out restarting my machine (i would prefer to not even have to shut down PS but if that will work i can deal with it)

thanks
-matt

MacBook Pro 2.33 Ghz- Radeon X1600 Graphics - 3 gb ram, Mac OS X (10.5.2), Breaking macs since OS 6.0.5 | 20 gb 4th Gen iPod | 8 gb iPhone

Posted on Apr 13, 2008 11:27 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Network 23

Level 6

12,351 points

May 13, 2008 1:33 PM in response to mattathayde

mattathayde wrote:
is there a way to clear off the scratch disks with out restarting my machine (i would prefer to not even have to shut down PS but if that will work i can deal with it)

Manual management of scratch disk files is not recommended. There are ways to do it, but if you did so and then the OS or Photoshop went looking for the RAM data it stashed in one but you removed the file behind its back, that's an express ticket to Crash City.

You won't be able to remove any Photoshop scratch files while Photoshop is running (and not cause a crash or serious problem). That's because the size of Photoshop scratch files is tied to the complexity of the file you are opening. That means your choices for minimizing Photoshop scratch files are to 1) work with smaller files or fewer layers, 2) work with fewer History states, 3) Get a lot more RAM, 4) Get a bigger disk, 5) Attach an external disk and use Photoshop preferences to assign the scratch disk to that instead of your poor, overburdened boot disk. Obviously you are already planning to do some of these things. If you have a spare external hard drive lying around, #5 could immediately get you out of this jam as far as Photoshop is concerned.

You won't be able to remove any OS scratch files for similar reasons. Now, Mac OS X only needs more and bigger scratch files if you don't have enough RAM for what you are doing. So to minimize OS scratch files, max out your RAM or do less complex things. If you are good with Unix, you could force OS X to put its scratch file on an external drive, but you'd better reassign it back to the boot drive before you detach the external or once again you can confuse and crash the OS.

OS X, Windows XP and Vista all work best with 10GB or more free on the drive at all times, not counting what free space Photoshop or your audio/video apps might need on top of that for scratch. When my PowerBook was my only computer, I always hooked up an external FireWire drive for the scratch demands of Photoshop and others.

I have always ended up maxing out the RAM and upgrading the hard drives of my laptops. It makes many things easier.

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Answer 2

Rod Hagen

Level 7

32,000 points

May 13, 2008 6:33 PM in response to mattathayde

Why not set up the external as the Photoshop scratch disc?

Cheers

Rod

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Answer 3

May 13, 2008 1:11 PM in response to mattathayde

Hi mattathayde;

I think with those messages, you are in deep trouble. You are going to have to do some serious cleaning of your disks to get back substantial amounts of disk space and quickly. Once you have done that you are going to have to boot with the install media for Mac and repair the disk. Without doing this you are in jeopardy of losing everything.

Allan

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Answer 4

May 13, 2008 12:46 PM in response to mattathayde

I just started having the same problem today also. I had photoshop plus lightroom running[as I have done many times] but I don't know what to do to fix it. I wish someone would help with this thread because until they do; I am going to have to try to fix this one on my own and I am not skilled enough to know what to do; especially if it comes to partitioning.

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