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primary scratch disk erasing allocating

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by rosej

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I work with large photo files and I often get the "scratch disk is full" message, which then hangs everything up. I bought another 40g internal hard drive which is virtually empty. So my questions are:

1) How do I clear the primary scratch disk?
2) How do I allocate the 40g hard drive to be the primary scratch disk?

I run Windows XP and I work with Kodak Easy Share, Adobe Photo Deluxe and Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. I have my new 5 mega pixel digital camera set at highest quality 2592x1944 which means photo file size ranges from 800k to 1.2 meg when I download them into my computer.

I am new to digital photography. If you have any digital photo related websites that offer good tips and/or I can post questions to...please send them to me.

Thanks!

7 replies

by valis

first, what the heck is a "scratch" disk?

if you want to use the new 40, it should show up as d or e or f drive, just save your stuff to that one.

by pgm554

Adding more scratch disk space for Photoshop.
in Photoshop check whether you assigned another partition / drive (if applicable) as additional scratch-disk:
- in main menu select File (or Edit if PS 6) and choose Preferences
- choose here Plug-ins & Scratch Disks
here you can select additional partitions / drives for the virtual memory administration of Photoshop.

by no

A scratch disk is temporary disk space used for storing data and performing computations on files during a work session when the random-access memory (RAM) is insufficient. (For certain operations, PhotoDeluxe Home Edition requires that three to five times the size of the file be available in RAM.)
For example, if you have 16 MB of RAM allocated to Home Edition, and you are opening a 5-MB photo, Home Edition will need 15-25 MB of RAM. To make up the difference, Home Edition will temporarily use memory from your scratch disk while the photo is opening.

By default, the Home Edition application uses the hard drive with the most available space as the scratch disk. However, you may wish to change the primary scratch disk or designate a secondary scratch disk. The secondary disk is used when the primary disk is full. You will want to use your fastest hard disk, or the one with the most available space, as your primary scratch disk.

Note: Don't use removable cartridge media as scratch disks because they are slower than hard disks. Using cartridges as scratch disks can significantly degrade the performance of Home Edition. In addition, when you use removable cartridge media, you run a higher risk of having image corruption.

To change the memory preferences:

1 At the top of your screen, choose File > Preferences > Memory Preferences. For more information, see Using menus.
2 For Primary, select the disk you want Home Edition to use first.
3 For Secondary, select the disk you want Home Edition to use when the Primary disk is out of space.
4 For Physical Memory Usage, designate what proportion of RAM Home Edition should use before using the scratch disk. It's best to set this number at 75% (Windows 95 and Windows 98) or 65% (Windows NT?) or lower so that additional memory will be available when you need to use a plug-in module (which enables various Home Edition features, such as applying certain special effects, scanning photos, and saving files in vari

by rosej

Thank you for the information on Adobe Photoshop. Do you know how XP allocates scratch disk space (and how I could change where it does that)? For example, sometimes I use the "Explore" function in XP to display thumbnails and then full size photos. Ocassionally this also hangs and seems to run out of space. Would increasing internal memory in my computer be a significant help?

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