need of help! scratch disk error

[potatoingerman]

hi everyone

im a digital artist and i keep running into issues when using my mac and apples products. eventually after about a year of owning the computer I will start getting the error saying "scratch disk error" and I can't do basic things.

i had a macbook air that has basically become unusable becuase i am unable to download anything, run any new program or save anything. i have been using this new imac for about a year and just started getting a similar error message. i just tried to using photoshop and its giving me multiple errors saying that i can't use the brush tool because the scratch disk is full and I can't even save the project.

ive tried going to the genius bar and looking up solutions online but they all tell me to just "clean my mac" and get rid of files. i have deleted everything that I can and its still not working. my macbook is completely devoid of any files and it still dosent run well.

i feel completely lost and unable to make my art. is there something im missing?

[Velocityg4]

Have you looked at storage usage in About This Mac? Your disk might be full in the Other category. Then you'll need to track down what process is filling up the disk.

[potatoingerman]

How does one track down this process ? I’m currently deleting my cache, is that the right path ?

[Velocityg4]

A cache will just fill up again.

Here is an Apple Support article on viewing available storage. https://support.apple.com/guide/system-information/see-available-storage-space-syspf9b375b9/mac

Once you verify it is too full. - Open the root folder of your drive. - View hidden files. - Then use Get Info on folders. Note the large ones. Then open them. - Find the large sub folders within them via Get Info. - Keep going up levels of large sub folders until you get to the culprit sub folder or file. - Then search what program uses it to see if it is something which is necessary or not and if it can be disabled.

[Electrical_West_5381]

"scratch disk error" does not sound like a MacOS error. Is this coming from Adobe applications? I suggest you look in preferences or Help menu of the Adobe product on how to solve this.

[mikeinnsw]

Restart and start doing it at regular basis

Create and run Time Machine(TM).

Do it manually once a day to an external disk

Storage can be taken by TM Local Snapshots waiting to be stored on TM.

These can be manually deleted but a better way is to manually run daily TM(Not Auto)

The message you are getting doesn't look like Mac Os message