- Changing the location of the Scratch Disk in Photoshop is something that sooner or later you will have to do
- These scratch disks hold all temporary files during edits
- What happens when they are full and how to modify the location of the Scratch Disk step by step?
As we learn about how one of the best photo editing programs works, we’ll learn some of the secrets that professionals have been living with in their jobs for years. Assuming you’re experiencing scratch disk issues, this article will show you how to change the location of the Scratch Disk in Photoshop in a few simple steps. so that it doesn’t affect you.
The first thing you have to know is that you can change the scratch disk location without even opening Photoshop in both Windows 10 and Windows 11as long as you resort to the Settings panel.
Of course You will need to know what are the essential steps to follow in these situations, just in case. All this, like direct response to the message stating “Scratch Disk Full” while you are using the app.
But what is Scratch Disk in Photoshop?
With the peace of mind that it is a problem that you are going to be able to solve, we must tell you that Scratch Disk is the default disk that stores all temporary Photoshop files at the time of its normal execution. When Photoshop isn’t being used, the disk basically has no reason to exist, and could be rendered either by a hard disk drive or a solid disk driveand really nothing would change.
In either case, Photoshop uses the storage space to safeguard the temporary files required during an edition, thus avoiding having to make the most of your computer’s RAM memory.
This is an interesting gadget from its developers that prevents RAM from collapsing with each edition, considering that it is a process that can jeopardize a PC that does not have enough hardware.
The result of this is that RAM can take over other processes while allocated virtual disks hold temporary files until they are replaced by others or no longer needed.
Default scratch disks and how to change them
By default, Photoshop takes the same virtual memory unit that the system refers to in other situations. Having said that, if OS is on C drive, it will take C drive as scratch disk. It is exactly the same if you have the latest version of Photoshop or an earlier one, because they all do the same thing.
Another thing to note is that there is no specific amount of storage for a disk to act as Photoshop’s temporary file storage, although the developers of the software did share some details about it, such as that You need, at least, about 20 GB free.
That is why, when the preset scratch disk is full, the warning message appears. We have, faced with these circumstances, to choose another virtual memory disk to skip the inconvenience.
Change the location of the Scratch Disk in Photoshop step by step
If you’ve been using Photoshop for years and you already know more or less their menus, just follow these steps:
- Open the Photoshop application
- Click on the Edit menu
- Go to Preferences, Temporary Disks
- Mark the drive you want to determine as a scratch disk
- Press the OK button to set it
- Restart Photoshop
If you are a beginner, we are going to analyze how the procedure is a little more detailed, just in case.
First of all, you must open Photoshop as you always do, entering the Edit option found on the top menu bar, and then going to the Preferences and the Temporary Disks section.
You will notice that all the active drives installed on your PC appear, whether they are HDD or SDD type and, as we said, drive C or system drive is almost certainly the default for those files. Eventually, you can change it from the corresponding checkboxchoosing and OK.
Otherwise, never uncheck the box for temporary drive.
Once all the modifications have been applied, all that remains is to restart Photoshop for the changes to take effect.
