Photoshop Scratch Disk Error OSX Lion 10.7.3

[FocusCreative22]

I have had Photoshop CS5 installed on my system for over a year, and it worked fine all this time under Snow Leopard. Now that I've upgraded to Lion, Photoshop will not open due to these messages:

Could not open a scratch file because the disk is unavailable.

Could not initialize Photoshop because the disk is unavailable.

The scratch disk in question is an 80gb partition of a 1tb internal hard drive. If I delete the preferences file (by holding down cmd-shift-opt when starting PS) then it starts up just fine. If I go into preferences and reset it to use the scratch disk, then next time I try to reopen the program I get the same 2 error messages and I have to ditch the preferences again.

There is nothing wrong with the disks, I verified them. And anyway, I've been using that scratch disk with Photoshop for the last year with no issues. It was only after I switched to Lion that this started happening.

I need to be able to take advantage of the performance increase that a scratch disk offers. Anybody have any ideas on what's happening or how to solve this?

[djbezerker]

Same for me i've reinstalled, repaired permissions with utility disk, repaired the disk with onyx...

nothing same error PLEASE WE NEED HELP!!!

same version photoshop cs5 e mac osx 10.7.3

[Arpit_Kapoor]

Try to reset the scratch disk preferences by clicking Option+Command Key while launching PS CS5 and then select or change the respective hard drives as scratch disk.

[FocusCreative22]

Arpit,

Thanks for the response!

I tried that, and after selecting the scratch disks it still gives the same 2 errors.

[FocusCreative22]

And just to be clear, I tried switching the scratch disk to another internal hard drive, separate from the original scratch partition. It gives the same errors there as well.

[djbezerker]

A Arpit suggested i've started photoshop pressing alt+cmd keys

i've changed the disk to onother external usb disk and it works,

but if i came back to my original disk on my mac HD it doesn't works, i need to understand where is photoshop accessing to & control permissions.

I've got the same problem with the native osx unzipper

[dunstone123]

This worked perfectly for the same problem I had with CS6. Many thanks.

[harleywc]

Thank you! this fixed my problem.

Harley

[Arpit_Kapoor]

One of 2 things:

1) The scratch disk that you specified in preferences is missing, or has changed names.

2) You have a disk permissions problem that makes Photoshop unable to read the disk you specified for scatch.

Try resetting both Br CS5 and PS CS5 preferences by pressing Shift+Option+Command key at their launch.

Quit PS CS5 and Br CS5 and delete the below folders :

• /Users/ username /Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS5 Settings.
• /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.bridge5.plist
• /Users/username/Library/Caches/com.adobe.Photoshop

In Lion, Library will be hidden, To unhide, follow the below steps:

When in the Finder, hold down the "alt/option" key and pull down the Go menu, Library appears in the list of locations you can select.

Repair the disk permissions from Utilities->Disk Utility.

If still same issue, re-install PS CS5

[FocusCreative22]

Sorry for the delay, I've been out of town for several days.

I tried following your instructions, however it seems I have no //com.adobe.bridge5.plist file, only up to 4? I suppose that means I don't have the latest version of Bridge installed? So I did everything else. The same issue persists.

I then did a fresh install of Photoshop CS5.1 (running as a trial) alongside CS5 and it has the same problems.

Here is the interesting thing: if I create a new user on my system, and login as that new user, then I can open Photoshop just fine, even after I ask it to use the scratch disk.

[FocusCreative22]

I also tried removing my entire User Preferences folder, then logging out and back in to see if a rebuilt user preferences folder would allow Photoshop to work. It did not. So the problem must not be in User Preferences, right?

[Lundberg02]

Repair permissions.  Check ownership of the partition and readwrite status. Command S at the startup chime, fsck -fy at the root prompt, quit when the disk check is complete.

[FocusCreative22]

Lundberg,

Thank you for taking the time to offer suggestions. I have verified that I have full read-write priveleges for the scratch disk. However I'm only familiar with the basic level of these, meaning, when I get info on the disk I can see that my user account has read-write permissions. If there are other kinds of permissions then I don't know how to check that. I have repaired permissions several times with no effect.

I tried starting in safe mode, and verifying the disk with fsck -fy however this also had no effect. I did notice that when the check was through it only named the boot drive as being "OK"—should it have also checked the other drives? If so, how do I get it to do that?

I suppose the next step is to do a complete uninstall and reinstall.

[Chris Cox]

The permissions error is with the scratch file or volume, not with preferences.  Resetting the preferences was just a way to force Photoshop into resetting the scratch preferences (which won't help if the boot disk can't be used).

Reinstalling Photoshop also won't help, since the disk permissions issue will remain.  Reinstalling the OS after erasing the drive might help - but that's a lot of trouble.

You need to check the permissions at the root level of your disk, and /private (not normally visible in the Finder, you'll have to use the unix command line tools or GoToFolder).

It's also possible that you have duplicate volume names in /Volumes causing problems (again, you would need command line tools to clean that up).

My guess is that your upgrade changed the user id, and thus you don't have the permissions you think you do on the boot disk.

[Lundberg02]

Use Disk Utility> Repair Disk   from your boot disk to repair the scratch disk.

[FocusCreative22 · Accepted solution]

Chris,

Thank you for responding. I think you're onto something. I looked in disk utility to see if I could repair permissions on the scratch volume, as Lundberg suggested, however the option to do so was greyed out due to this message: "Not available because the selected disk is set to ignore ownership". So I went to the partition, pulled up the Get Info box and saw that the "Ignore Ownership on this Volume" box was not checked. I checked it to see what would happen, and although the option to repair permissions is still greyed out in disk utility, now Photoshop starts up perfectly, even with the problematic scratch partition set as the primary Photoshop Scratch Disk.

Is this the wrong way to get to the right answer?

Concerning your other suggestions, I was able to use Go To Folder to get to the /private folder, and I saw that it said I could only read. I was able to add my user account and give it Read/Write permission through the Get Info dialogue box (I fear Terminal unless I have explicit instructions). Is this what I want? I also looked into the /volumes folder and apparently there is nothing within it, unless the folders are hidden I suppose. I checked permissions of my main drive (startup disk, on which all my applications reside) and they claim that I have read/write privileges. However I'm only viewing this in the Get Info box; is that not the right place to see/alter it? Because this whole time the scratch partition also claimed that I have read/write permissions and that was obviously not true, as it only started working right once I checked "Ignore Ownership on this Volume". But it's incredibly confusing because I could save files to the scratch drive from Photoshop; I just couldn't choose it as a scratch drive.

The short question is: is it ok that I simply chose to ignore ownership on these disks, and that I messed with the /private folder, and/or do I need to do anything else?

[Chris Cox]

That's one way to do it. But it also tells us that the problem was permissions, without telling us where the problem existed.

Hopefully next version we can spend some time on providing more specific error messages in these cases (tell me the @#%@#% directory with the problem).

If you are the only user on the system, then ignore permissions should be fine.

[djbezerker]

i've tried repairing permissions but the only way to make it works is attache a new external disck and make that the scratch disk

[Guest]

THANK YOU FocusCreative22! I've suffering with this issue for over a year and you've sorted it out. Very grateful.

Tim

[djbezerker]

try cleaning all your browser cache, it has worked for me, really i'm not sure there's a correlation, but now it works

[danielnegri]

For me just:

   CMD+Option+Shift (command+alt+shift)

"Delete the Photoshop Settings File?" > "YES" and you are done.

[Guest]

EASY FIX

to fix this is very simple, close photoshop and illustrator,either check the scratch disk "ignore ownership on this volume" by right click on the scratch disk and pick Get Info OR use a software like Onyx to show Hidden files and folders (start onyx go to Finder tab, check Show hidden files and folders) then open your scratch disk and delete .TemporaryItems, on mine i removed a bunch of files that shows  as greyed out files and were created over the years only the .Trashes cannot be deleted but to be on the safe side just deleting the .TemporaryItems will do

restart photoshop now you can use your scratch disk or set it again without getting the error. good day