Will an external hardrive increase my scratch disk size??

[zainaba1462147]

Hi,

So I have Photoshop CS5 On my Laptop (running in windows 7) and I have just enough scratch disk space to be using it most of the time. However with bigger files it sometimes stops because scratch disks are full and i need to close everything else. I have about 1GB free on my laptops drive which it uses.

I've read that having an external hard drive, one that you plug via usb will allow me to add anther scratch disk. Before I buy one can anyone suggest how big of a size I need and if there are specific things I should look for, the hard drive will just be for the scratch disk as my laptop has a memory card which i store everything else.

Thank you

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

zainaba1462147  wrote

I have about 1GB free on my laptops drive which it uses.

Ouch...I honestly think you have bigger problems than Photoshop scratch. A drive that full is very close to choking completely.

Absolutely, get an external USB disk and move everything you can over.

But there's an inherent problem with both Windows and MacOS: all your user data under your user account - preferences, previews, caches, all this stuff accumulates and never gets removed again. It can grow to amazing sizes over time. The problem is that these folders are hidden by default, so few users are aware of it.

I recently cleared out 80 GB from my user account. To give an example: I had Bridge caches going back three full versions, totalling 25 GB - even though these earlier Bridge versions had been uninstalled from the system! Nothing is ever removed from the user account.

[zainaba1462147]

Hey,

Thanks for your quick reply.

Yeah I know, Ive tried removing what I know I can delete from the CDrive but its still pretty full..

how do i delete the user account files?

Do you think a 80Gb Size hard drive will be enough?

[D Fosse]

What you can do at first is to run Disk Cleanup in Windows. This will take care of leftover system files.

As for the user settings and caches - the reason I called it an "inherent problem" is that there's really no system tool or procedure for cleaning it up. There should be! There is an excellent free utility called "WinDirStat" (google it) that will map it out for you in a graphic interface - so at least you can see where all that space goes. You still have to manually hunt it down and delete manually.

[zainaba1462147]

I always do that, not too much different.

I'll check that out thank you

[zainaba1462147]

Hey,

Thanks for your quick reply.

Yeah I know, Ive tried removing what I know I can delete from the CDrive but its still pretty full..

how do i delete the user account files?

Do you think a 80Gb Size hard drive will be enough?

[kevin stohlmeyer]

With the price of externals, go big or go home. At least a 1TB SSD to start, especially if you plan to utilize it for storage and scratch disk.

[zainaba1462147]

I just need it to be able to use photoshop, I have other storage cards which i use for storing everything else..

[Trevor.Dennis]

Check out WinDirStat and how to relocate folders and make space in this thread. 

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