Photoshop complains scratch disks are full, gives no way to fix it?

[Mobius Strip]

For some reason, Photoshop won't start on my system; it quits after complaining that the scratch disks are full.  There are two giant problems with this.

1. It doesn't say what the current scratch disks are, or provide any way of changing them. There's no excuse for this; even if it's somehow too burdensome to provide a UI to change the disks, why does the dialog not tell us the current scratch disks so we can do something about it?

2. The fullest disk on my system has 6 GB free.  If Photoshop can't start with 6 GB, then it needs serious work.

Is this a reported defect?

Thanks for any insight.

[gener7]

First we need to know what OS version you are using and your Photoshop version. Then we can go from there.

Press Cmd-Opt or Ctrl-Alt (Windows) when launching Photoshop and you can see the Scratch Disk dialog:

Scratch disks must be formatted NTFS for Windows and HFS+ for Mac or they won't show up.

[Trevor.Dennis]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Mobius+Strip  wrote

2. The fullest disk on my system has 6 GB free.  If Photoshop can't start with 6 GB, then it needs serious work.

You are kidding us, right?   How much free space on your boot drive?  How many drives do you have, and how much room is there on them?

[Mobius Strip]

Latest version of Mac OS, latest version of Photoshop as of yesterday.

The boot drive had 6 GB free, and the next-fullest drive had over 100 GB.

And again, there's no excuse for the dialog not to show what the scratch disks are.

[D Fosse]

If your system drive has only 6GB free, you have more serious problems than the Photoshop scratch disk. You really need to clean up that drive ASAP before your whole system grinds to a halt.

[Test Screen Name]

We told you how to get the dialogue to change/set scratch disk.

[Mobius Strip]

fhttps://forums.adobe.com/people/Test+Screen+Name  wrote

We told you how to get the dialogue to change/set scratch disk.

So?  THE DIALOG didn't.

Again, no excuse.

[gener7]

Maybe this will help: You will see "None" in Second, Third and Fourth, but click on that drop-down menu and you will see the HFS+ formatted flash drive I've added. If your scratch is not HFS+, Photoshop will not display it at all. No NTFS or FAT32 drives allowed.

You can even set the order: First to "Sierra" and the second to the "BRS" boot drive to be sure the dedicated scratch goes First.

True it won't display Free Space, but the Cmd i on the selected drive on your Desktop will.

[D Fosse]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Mobius+Strip  wrote

Again, no excuse.

Instead of being offended, you should pay attention to what the message says. Assigning a different scratch disk is almost moot here, you have much bigger problems!

A system drive with 6GB free space is an emergency situation. You need to clear up space fast, and not because of Photoshop.

[Mobius Strip]

gener7, thanks for the info.  It doesn't apply here, but I appreciate the reply.

D, I don't need advice on disk partitioning. It has nothing to do with the fact that Photoshop presented a defective, lazy dialog box that didn't provide essential information.  Rambling on about ancillary aspects of the situation is pointless.

And, as it turned out, Photoshop was perfectly capable of launching with the available disk space; apparently it was still suffering from the decades-old malaise of "corrupt preferences file."  That's what emerged after a lengthy exploration of my system by an Adobe rep.

[Nancy OShea]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Mobius+Strip  wrote

The boot drive had 6 GB free, and the next-fullest drive had over 100 GB.

That's not nearly enough.

My primary drive has 1.5 TB of free scratch disk space.  My externals have about 1 TB each.

Nancy