Huge scratch file appearing out of nowhere!

[dandelion-ellie]

Something very peculiar is happening! This only started yesterday.

I have a 56GB scratch drive, and it is ONLY used as a scratch drive. I started getting "scratch disc full" errrors so I looked and there were some redundant files there I cleared it all down so it was empty.

I then export an image from Lightroom to Photoshop, and starting working on it, immediately one "Photoshop Temp" file appears and is 56GB in size!! I'm not doing anything particularly complicated just a few layers with some cloning. But after doing patch tool for a short while the error appears again telling me that I can't use the patch tool because the scratch disc is full.

I close down photoshop, and the "Photoshop temp" file disappears and the scratch drive is virtually empty again. This has happened a few times.

Also - and perhaps this is related - usually I would work on a file in photoshop and save as a TIFF, then go back to lightroom. Usually this would be quite quick - a few seconds to close the TIFF file and it to update in lightroom. However since yesterday I can see the TIFF file saving.. 20%..34%..45% SLOW SLOW SLOW. It's never been like this in the 5 years I've had this PC - until yesterday!

What has gone wrong?

My version is Adobe Photoshop Version: 2017.1.0 20170309.r.207 2017/03/09:23:00:00 CL 1107877  x64

[Trevor.Dennis]

It doesn't really mean anything without knowing a few numbers.  What is the image size in pixels? What is it's bit depth?  How many layers, and how many Smart Objects.   I wonder if you got a linear measurement mixed up with pixels when making or resizing a document resulting in a huge pixel size.  However, if this is a photograph, I guess that is unlikely.

[dandelion-ellie]

Thanks Trevor
The image size is 5596 x 3500 px
18x13 inches @ 300 dpi
8 bit

Only 3 layers - see screenshot.

I really don't think it's the file that's the issue. This happens with lots of different images.
I open them up and do some basic cloning and liquefy work for about 15 minutes and then the scratch file will go from 0GB to 56GB and the disc is suddently full. Close that image file and the scratch file disappears. Same every time.

Does that shed any light? Fingers crossed - Photoshop is becoming unusuable!

[Trevor.Dennis]

My gut feeling is that there are problems with the 56Gb drive you are using for scratch space.  A drive that small is likely to be a good few years old.  Photoshop needs contiguous space for each Temp file, and it could be that a bad sector on the drive interrupts contiguous space from Photoshops point of view.  Note that I do not know this for sure.

When you open the Preferences > Scratch tab, does it respond straight away, or is there a delay?  If the latter state is the case, then that is likely Photoshop interrogating the drive's integrity.  This could also explain the very slow save times which are not so much an issue with the drive you are saving the file to, but rather loading those parts of the file that live on the scratch drive. 

How many drives do you have, and how much free space do they have?  If possible, try removing the problem drive as scratch space completely.  Test the drive with something like CrystalDiskInfo.   Run Speccy on your system (the free version is fine).  Bother give too much information if anything, but provide summaries like Good and Bad.

What operating system are you using? And what is the spec of your system?  It would be easier to open Photoshop and go Help > System info > Copy and paste to this thread.  But the bottom line here is I think your issue is hardware related.

[Guest · Accepted solution]

Don't worry it's just another bug Adobe decided to introduce in PSCC2017.1

after latest Photoshop CC2017 Update 200GB SSD full in hours

[Trevor.Dennis]

Ged said:

Don't worry it's just another bug Adobe decided to introduce in PSCC2017.1

after latest Photoshop CC2017 Update 200GB SSD full in hours

Thanks Ged.  I wish I'd known that before writing my posts to this thread.

[Guest]

Hi Trevor

It's easy to replicate the issue, just randomly start using the Patch Tool on an image for about five minutes and watch the Scratch Disk Fill.

I used the Patch Tool just doing random patching all over the image for about 2 minutes and the Scratch Disk went from 1.5GB to 28GB and continued to grow the more I used it

[dandelion-ellie]

Thanks for confirming that Ged. Glad to hear that my computer isn't broken at least.
Any ideas how long adobe usually takes to fix these bugs? Photoshop is just about unusable for me at the moment!

[jbm007]

Here is the actual link.

Scratch Disk error after running Photoshop CC 2017.1