{"id":97791,"date":"2025-11-05T16:25:58","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T22:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/?p=97791"},"modified":"2025-11-05T16:26:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T22:26:15","slug":"a-scratch-disk-is-the-overlooked-mac-upgrade-that-makes-pro-apps-feel-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/97791-a-scratch-disk-is-the-overlooked-mac-upgrade-that-makes-pro-apps-feel-new\/","title":{"rendered":"A Scratch Disk is the Overlooked Mac Upgrade That Makes Pro Apps Feel New"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Your Mac has a finite amount of RAM. Many design applications such as Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Krita and the like will often use all available memory at its disposal. And, more often than not, these design programs may require even more RAM than what your Mac can supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In such an event, a program like Photoshop will use your Mac\u2019s internal storage as a scratch disk<\/strong>. Think of a scratch disk as dedicated temporary storage for portions of your documents that don\u2019t fit into the memory or RAM of your machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many general users can get by with using their Mac\u2019s internal storage as a scratch disk. It makes sense if your Mac\u2019s drive is capacious and you have a lot of free space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, if you\u2019re in the habit of using your Mac\u2019s internal storage for holding applications, data, and the like, you may not have as much space for your scratch disk. In fact, if you encounter a \u201cScratch Disk Full\u201d error, your Mac is telling you that you are running out of storage space on your internal storage device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To avoid such a scenario, I recommend having a dedicated scratch disk that your Mac can use. What you\u2019ll need is at least one NVME M.2 drive with 500GB or more capacity and a USB-C or Thunderbolt enclosure. You can get both or just an enclosure if you already have an M.2 drive with the extremely speedy OWC Express 1M2<\/strong><\/a> and Express 1M2 80G<\/strong><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Express 1M2<\/strong> offers USB4\/Thunderbolt 4-level speeds up to 3,836 MB\/s. The Express 1M2 80G<\/strong> doubles the bandwidth thanks to USB4 v2, providing speeds over 6,000 MB\/s. Faster data throughput is crucial when it comes to scratch disks as it means no lag or data thrashing. For this reason, you\u2019ll want to avoid using platter-based (aka traditional) hard drives. Going with either Express 1M2 drive makes this step a no-brainer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Take your freshly installed NVME drive and format it using Apple’s Disk Utility.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Once you\u2019ve got the NVME drive inside its enclosure, the next step is to connect it to your Mac and format the new drive using Disk Utility. Give your dedicated scratch disk a name (I typically call it \u201cScratch Master\u201d) and format it as an APFS volume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Photoshop will use your Mac’s internal drive as its primary scratch disk. By visiting the Settings > Scratch Disk option, you can re-assign your scratch disk to your freshly minted NVME drive.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Photoshop gives users the option to have multiple scratch disk volumes, prioritized from 1 to 7. It’s a bit overkill if you have a capacious NVME drive that’s used exclusively for this task.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Next, you\u2019ll need to tell your favorite design applications where your new scratch disk is located at. In Photoshop\u2019s settings, for example, go to Photoshop > Settings > Scratch Disk<\/strong> and select your newly formatted drive. Photoshop will allow for multiple scratch disks. Scratch disk drives are prioritized from 1 to 7, should you have more than one free volume you wish to use for that purpose. In my experience, having one dedicated scratch disk for multiple applications is more than enough. (Each application will write to a separate folder on your scratch disk.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Premiere has something akin to a scratch disk option, in the form of “Media Cache”.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
in the Media Cache tab, select your Scratch disk for the location of both the Media Cache Files and the Media Cache Database.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For Premiere, you\u2019ll want to visit Settings > Media Cache<\/strong> and change the location of the Media Cache files to a folder on your scratch disk. I also have the Media Cache database point to the scratch disk as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The big advantage of having a dedicated scratch disk is optimal performance. You can open and work with larger files with ease, and not have to worry about whether you are encroaching on the limits of your internal drive\u2019s available free space (thereby risking data corruption \/ sluggish performance).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the ultimate scratch disk setup, don’t miss the OWC Express 1M2<\/a> <\/strong>and Express 1M2 80G<\/a><\/strong>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A scratch disk is a great way to ensure your Mac’s performance keeps flying no matter how much data you throw at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":286,"featured_media":97853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7597,4],"class_list":["post-97791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mac-tips","category-tech-tips"],"yoast_head":"\nA Scratch Disk is the Overlooked Mac Upgrade That Makes Pro Apps Feel New<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A scratch disk is a great way to ensure your Mac's performance keeps flying no matter how much data you throw at it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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