My house is clean - disk still "full."

[Guest]

Running out of disk space while using Photoshop has begun to really hurt my
business. The disk is 60% free, and I run lean on Startup and Services. I
have a gig of ram, 3.2 processor, Radeon 9800 Pro video card. Photoshop has 2
scratch disks.

Here's a list of things I've tried:
Mcafee w/ current profiles
Ad-aware SE w/current profiles
Spybot w/current profiles
Disk Cleaner
Disk Check - nothing amiss
Process Explorer indicates minimal usage of ram with Photoshop running.

My files average 80-90 megs. After working a short while, the cursor
disappears and things all but freeze up - I get a message that the disk is
full. I have to reboot. I attempted to read up on cluster size issues, but my
eyes glaze over.

Disk check is running chronically as well. It is not a scheduled task. When
checking the MS article that indicates this path to stop
it...HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manager\BootExecute...I have no "BootExecute" listed. I'm not proficient
enough to use Recovery Console. Can someone please rescue me?

Holly

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Go to the web site of your hard disc manufacturer and obtain their hard disc
diagnostics. Windows' own Disk Error Checking is fine as far as it goes,
however the manufacturer's diagnostics are more thorough and will tell you
if you have a problem with your hard disc.

Note: The manufacturer's 'extended' diagnostic tests can take many hours to
complete, so best to go to bed early and run them overnight

 

[Guest]

Thanks Ted.
Dumb question: How does one determine the manufacturor of the hard disk? No
utility I run says anything other than "Standard disk." It's a Dell Pentium
IV.

Thanks

Holly

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Why is that a dumb question?

There are many ways you can determine who made your hard disc. Here are a
few:
1. Check the invoice for your computer, or call Dell.
2. Go to Device Manager. (Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware tab >
Device Manager)
3. Go to System Information. (Start > All Programs > Accessories > System
Tools > System Information)
4. Check hard disc properties. (Start > My Computer > right-click on the
icon for your hard disk and choose Properties > Hardware tab)

 

[Chuck]

Most of the "better" photo editing programs have an "undo" feature. This
feature can (if too many undo steps are allowed) eat storage. I don't use
photoshop, so I cannot tell you what menu tree to use to reduce the number
of "undo" steps allowed.

 

[Doc]

Try to check your folders size in real-time to see "who eats all disk
space". For this propose you can use View Folder Size Pro - a real-time
folder size information utility. You can get it from:
http://www.moveax.com/