Scratch disk? what the heck is it?

[BeckyMax]

I just recently took my puter up to the local whiz bang to add more ram so things would work a little faster. He says I have 4 gb ram. So WHY after I edit 6-8 pictures now, photoshop comes up with this crappy little saying "could not perform action, scratch disk is full" or "memory is all used up". I NEVER had those sayings before I had the extra ram added. Did he screw me over? I've heard of scratch disk before but never had to know what I needed it for or much anything else about it either. I need educated so I can go back up there and tell him all about it. I'm thinking he charged me about $130. I looked up my system properties and it says" 75 total gigs, 46 gigs free. External hard drive 465 total gigs, 421 free. Ram is 2.67 ghz, 1.75 gb (this line confused me, do I have 2.67 ghz, 1.75 gb ram or just plain 1.75 gb ram because I paid him for extra ram and he said I now had 4 gb). Someone tell me what I need to know so I can fix this thing up.

Oh, and its not when I'm resizing for the web. I know to do that in pixels. It usually happens after I've done the editing, right after I click apply or flatten the image, just BEFORE I can save it! Ooooh, it's frustrating!! I'll edit 6 or 8 pix, no problem, then boom, I have to get out of PS, shut the computer down, then start all over on that photo.

Thanks for any help.

[brian.austin]

What operating system are you using?

Scratch disk is basically a "swap" area on the hard drive, usually a dedicated hard drive partition, that Photoshop uses to move photo data back and forth when RAM gets full. Your drives seem to be free enough to support it. You can adjust the settings in PS, going to the Preferences and adjusting memory/scratch disk. What you'll see will depend on which version of PS you're using.

Your computer is NOT seeing your new additional RAM if it says 1.75Gb. The 2.67GHz is processor speed. Depending on the operating system, you might either need an update (service pack) or a "switch" in your config settings to recognize the new RAM. Depending on the age of your motherboard, you might also need a BIOS setting changed. Any tech worthy of the name should have been able to do this and SHOULD have checked that the OS saw it. I'd complain about this one.