Is my "disk space" issue RAM or something else?

[nickyfsas]

Hi guys,

I have a 2019 iMac 5k, 27", 40gb RAM, 500gb SSD

I work on very large files for work and I don't keep anything on my computer aside from the Adobe suite and the current project at hand, so I always have a lot of storage space left as I off-load everything to hard-drives when finished with the files. I also don't have any other programs open while working with photoshop~

Lately while using photoshop, and working on larger/layered files, my computer keeps warning me that i'm "running low on disk space" - I used to see that a lot when I used my little MacBook pro, I really didn't think I'd encounter it on this iMac (That's kinda why I bought it in the first place)...

I already have 40gb of RAM, do I need to upgrade even further to remedy the disk space issue? Or is it something else entirely? The files are about 3-4gb, so they don't actually take up a lot of storage (considering I have 430gb+ to spare) so a bit confused - I definitely don't really know as much as I perhaps should about it all, so hoping to get your opinions and advice

Is there any way to get rid of this disk-space issue and continue working on my large files without issues?

Thanks so much for your help!

 

[JustMartin]

Two things to try. Next time it happens, go to the utilities folder in applications and start up Activity Monitor, that will show you how much memory and CPU are being used at the time. Also, when it happens right click on your drive and choose the Manage Storage option - that should show you what is taking up the space on your hard drive at that point.

 

[Dahoffman85]

Also, you should look into CCleaner if your constantly putting large files on and off your hard drive. While you're not taking up a lot of space at any one time your HD technically doesn't fully delete a file (just its pointers) until it's written over and it won't start writing over old files until all of the new space is written on. Essentially you could show only 20% of your HD used at a given moment but technically be near full with the ghosts of deleted files. CCleaner will go through these ghost files and essentially write "0" over them to fully remove them from the HD. The only downside is by doing so no deleted file will be recoverable. Also, this only applies to spin drives, SSD does not perform this way.

 

[Fishrrman]

Just wondering:
Do you use Time Machine?
If so, could "local backups" or "local snapshots" (or whatever they're called, I don't use TM) be taking up space on your drive (these files are normally invisible)?

How to ascertain if there are any "unseen" files eating up space on your drive:
Download DiskWave from here:

DiskWave Homepage

It's small in size and free.

Open DiskWave and go to the preferences.
Put a checkmark in "show invisible files".
Close preferences.

The DiskWave window shows you all your drives in plain English (no ridiculous graphical formats).
Click on any drive.
Now, you'll see what's ON the drive, listed in order of "largest to smallest".
You can easily locate what's eating up your space.

 

[nickyfsas]

Also, you should look into CCleaner if your constantly putting large files on and off your hard drive. While you're not taking up a lot of space at any one time your HD technically doesn't fully delete a file (just its pointers) until it's written over and it won't start writing over old files until all of the new space is written on. Essentially you could show only 20% of your HD used at a given moment but technically be near full with the ghosts of deleted files. CCleaner will go through these ghost files and essentially write "0" over them to fully remove them from the HD. The only downside is by doing so no deleted file will be recoverable. Also, this only applies to spin drives, SSD does not perform this way.

Hi there,
Thank you for your reply!

I'll be sure to check out CCleaner, as I purchased the 500gb SSD thinking that would be more than enough, and aside a few files and some Adobe programs on my computer (I only use photoshop at the moment) I really don't have anything else, the 3 folders I have on my desktop are a lot, so about 50gb in general, but they will come and go as each project does. No music/video files/games etc right now I have 135gb free of the 500gb and it's quite frustrating as it doesn't add up :/

I initially thought the way to avoid this "not enough disk space" error in photoshop was to get more RAM -that's what I was told and read often, so I invested in the RAM over the SSD, a bit worried that maybe I got it wrong and perhaps a larger SSD was more important (despite the plenty of advice I got pointing to the RAM being the thing to invest in based on my needs).

I'm really needing to create very large files, if I bought another set of RAM (32gb each) ...totalling my RAM to 96gb would that well and truly help or am I really stuck with simply not having enough space on SSD? I read somewhere that photoshop often chooses to use storage over RAM (or something like that) so more RAM might not even help?

Can one buy external SSD's to help, or am I sort of stuck with what I have? Sorry, probably stupid questions - I invested in a $5000+ computer literally because of the dreaded scratch disk error and here I am again haha..

Thanks for your time/help!

 

[nickyfsas]

Just wondering:
Do you use Time Machine?
If so, could "local backups" or "local snapshots" (or whatever they're called, I don't use TM) be taking up space on your drive (these files are normally invisible)?

How to ascertain if there are any "unseen" files eating up space on your drive:
Download DiskWave from here:

DiskWave Homepage

It's small in size and free.

Open DiskWave and go to the preferences.
Put a checkmark in "show invisible files".
Close preferences.

The DiskWave window shows you all your drives in plain English (no ridiculous graphical formats).
Click on any drive.
Now, you'll see what's ON the drive, listed in order of "largest to smallest".
You can easily locate what's eating up your space.

Thank you for your reply!

I don't use time machine no, I truly don't keep much on it aside the files I'm currently working on so I never really bothered with those sorts of back ups I guess.
I save a set of the finished files to an online storage site (Box) and then I save a set to an external hard drive, so I've never really felt a need for time machine (in the sense if my computer was completely wiped it wouldn't bother me as I have all my important stuff off it - though I probably should have considered using Time Machine as I finally upgraded to Catalina and instantly regretted it due to the bugs in photoshop aw haha)

Anyway, at the moment the computer is visually very clean, there must be "unseen" files or perhaps temp etc taking up space. I'll be sure to try DiskWave and maybe do a little research on how fully clean things out. If anything I'd rather start from zero and just re-install photoshop (it's literally all I use the computer for as I had an ipad etc for other stuff).
I know I can never get back the 500gb due to the programs installed taking up space, but I definitely should have a lot more than 135gb available~

A bit worried I maybe didn't invest in enough storage on the SSD, I did a lot of research beforehand as I'm not too knowledgeable on such things, but perhaps not enough research. Many people suggested I was best sticking with the 500gb and invest in the RAM instead - aware I don't need the computer to store files etc rather need the performance, I unfortunately didn't realise that not getting more SSD would hinder my ability to work with very large files in photoshop, I was hoping I could just buy more RAM...feeling a bit silly ha
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Two things to try. Next time it happens, go to the utilities folder in applications and start up Activity Monitor, that will show you how much memory and CPU are being used at the time. Also, when it happens right click on your drive and choose the Manage Storage option - that should show you what is taking up the space on your hard drive at that point.

Thank you, I'll be sure to do that next time it happens, last time it happened I simply just checked my SSD storage available and it was barely 10gb, insane. I then just closed photoshop (losing all my work) and restarted my computer, and it went back up to 150gb on its own~

I guess photoshop needed all that storage space to help save a large format file, I'm instantly regretting not buying a computer with more SSD, I genuinely didn't realise that photoshop could eat up like 50gb+ SSD just on one layered file (which was maybe only 600mb at most when properly saved) so I naively thought 500gb SSD would be more than enough for me, as I'd never be storing the files long term (and I'd never have a saved file more than 3-4gb)...now learning it's not quite as simple as that.
- I was hoping it was just a RAM thing, as I'd happily throw hundreds of dollars at more high RAM sticks just to finally get rid of that "no disk space" error lol it's like my worst nightmare.

Hopefully after freeing some storage space somehow it will be better, I'll be in a bit of trouble if I can't save these large layered files..

 

[JustMartin]

...

I'm really needing to create very large files, if I bought another set of RAM (32gb each) ...totalling my RAM to 96gb would that well and truly help or am I really stuck with simply not having enough space on SSD? I read somewhere that photoshop often chooses to use storage over RAM (or something like that) so more RAM might not even help?

Can one buy external SSD's to help, or am I sort of stuck with what I have? Sorry, probably stupid questions - I invested in a $5000+ computer literally because of the dreaded scratch disk error and here I am again haha..

Thanks for your time/help!

I really don't think you need any more RAM and it's certainly not worth buying it unless you have looked at your memory usage with the activity monitor. The only reason you would need more RAM would be if the computer was filling up the RAM and using the SSD to hold the rest. If you bring up activity monitor, click on the memory tab and look at the bottom where it says 'swap used' - that will tell you how much disk is being used for memory overflow.

You can buy an external SSD. I have a Samsung one plugged into the thunderbolt port and velcroed on the back of the machine. But, again, until you know what's taking up your disk space at the moment, it's just spending money on a guess.

 

[chrfr]

Lately while using photoshop, and working on larger/layered files, my computer keeps warning me that i'm "running low on disk space" - I used to see that a lot when I used my little MacBook pro, I really didn't think I'd encounter it on this iMac (That's kinda why I bought it in the first place)...

Is the message you're getting from Photoshop, that the scratch disk is full? You may be able to mitigate the problem by moving Photoshop's scratch disk to an external disk. You don't, however, want to use a slow disk for scratch purposes. Reducing the number of saved history states can also reduce disk space requirements.

Set up scratch disks

Learn how to set up and manage scratch disks in Photoshop.

helpx.adobe.com

 

[nickyfsas]

I really don't think you need any more RAM and it's certainly not worth buying it unless you have looked at your memory usage with the activity monitor. The only reason you would need more RAM would be if the computer was filling up the RAM and using the SSD to hold the rest. If you bring up activity monitor, click on the memory tab and look at the bottom where it says 'swap used' - that will tell you how much disk is being used for memory overflow.

You can buy an external SSD. I have a Samsung one plugged into the thunderbolt port and velcroed on the back of the machine. But, again, until you know what's taking up your disk space at the moment, it's just spending money on a guess.

Thank you again for your reply,
I've attached a little screenshot of the error, and also a screenshot of what my computer "info" looked like at that exact time (without closing anything or crossing the error off etc).

I kinda gave up on using photoshop and went to use another art program called 'Corel Painter 2020' which I used to use really often. The files aren't that large, they're also flattened etc, yet when I tried open a file (less than 1g) after restarting my computer I got the disk space error, yet I still have over 200gb available to use (which is still inaccurate and there's basically nothing on my computer now).

I also ran another app called "daisy disk" which showed I have like 150gb in "hidden files" (and I didn't know where to find them, even after "unhiding" hidden folders) ...I tried using those other apps and nothing appeared out of the ordinary, really not sure where all my space has gone, but also a bit confused how I'm getting disk space errors even though I have over 200gb free...do you perhaps know why this could be happening?

I don't mind spending the money if it means buying more RAM or some sort of external SSD, but it seems like my computer isn't even using the RAM or disk space it has available already...

I'm genuinely grateful for any help, these errors are really preventing me from doing my work and I have really strict deadlines this month - the computer is barely a year old, so hopefully there's no internal issues or something~

Thanks again!

 

[Dahoffman85]

It might not be an issue with your Mac at all but an issue within Photoshop or Corel Painter. They both have pixel limits and if you create a new file within their pixel limits but then expand that file beyond their pixel limits (yes it is stupid they allow you to do this but it is possible) you corrupt the file and it will not allow you to open it. Oddly enough there is no specific error message for this and instead they use a disk space error in its place. Can you creat a new file and work within the pixel limits with no issues? If so then this is definitely the problem you are facing. Corel Painters pixel limit is 16,382X16,382 and photoshop is 30kX30k