The full startup disk error on the MacBook Air is something that you will probably encounter at some point as someone that owns or works with this laptop. The 128 and 256 GB versions of the Air are really easy to max out, and a full hard drive on my MacBook Air is something that I have been living with since only a short while after I started using one.
An unwelcome window that popped up out of no where to inform you that your startup disk is full. The world isn't friendly anymore. It's dark, crowded and claustrophobic. Your computer has reached the end of its limits and you don't have the cash to drop on a new one. You used to treat your Mac like gold, but these days it's old, slow and full. Just double clicking on the hard drive should open it in finder window displaying everything on drive. The app Daisy Disk is very nice in that it will show you graphically what is taking up space on your drive. Free and available on App Store. Get an Overview of What’s Eating Up Mac Startup Disk Space. Mac users can quickly see what’s.
You can mitigate this problem by saving files to a cloud storage platform or an external hard drive, but you might find those options either impractical or cumbersome. In that case, you are going to need to clean the full startup disk on your MacBook Air by deleting some of the files that you aren’t using, or don’t need.
What is the Startup Disk on a MacBook Air?
The best way to understand the problem that you are having is to identify the actual issue. The startup disk on your MacBook Air is the hard drive that is storing all of your operating system files. Unless you have made some changes to your computer, this should be the hard drive that was in the laptop when you first bought it. Unless you have created additional disk partitions on your MacBook (this is fairly uncommon, and you would probably know if you had done it), then your startup disk is basically your hard drive.
You can view the current startup disk usage on your laptop by clicking the Apple icon at the top-left of the screen, clicking the About this Mac option, then clicking the Storage tab. This displays a breakdown of the storage usage on the computer.
You will note that there is a Manage option next to your hard drive on that screen. If you click that you will see another screen with some options for ways to clear space on the startup disk.
How Did My Startup Disk Get Full?
All of the files and programs that you use are saved to the startup disk. This changed a little bit in macOS Sierra if you have an iCloud account where you are able to save files on your desktop and documents folder, but basically any application, picture, song, or video is stored on your startup disk.
MacBook Airs typically have a small amount of storage space so, if you use it as your primary computer and aren’t using an external hard drive or cloud storage, then it is completely realistic that you could have a full startup disk just through normal usage. The smaller your hard drive, the more likely it is for you to get the “Your startup disk is almost full” message that likely led you to this page.
How Do I Fix a Full Startup Disk on My MacBook Air?
If you are almost out of room on your startup disk, then you need to start deleting stuff. The exact way to do this is going to vary from person to person, as not everyone has the same files, can delete the same stuff, or needs to free up the same amount of space.
Some common areas to look include:
The exact files to delete are going to vary, so you will need to manually move the files to your trash, then complete the steps in the linked article to empty that trash.
Is There a Better Way to Clean the Startup Disk on a MacBook Air?
Cleaning the areas of your hard drive described above can take a while, especially if your hard drive is nearing capacity and you don’t have 5 GB movie files that you can delete to quickly reclaim some of that space.
My favorite, and by far the easiest, way to fix a full startup disk on a Mac is with a program called CleanMyMac. You download it to your computer, run it, then it determines how much space you can free up by deleting files that you don’t need, and which are taking up a lot of your storage space.
We have written a step-by-step guide previously on how to delete junk files from your MacBook Air, but, basically, it can be broken down like this:
The amount of space that you will free up on your startup disk will vary depending upon what CleanMyMac finds and what you choose to delete, but it is very likely that you will get multiple GB of space back just from deleting iTunes files and system files. For example, the first time that I did it, I was able to free up about 7 GB of space from my startup disk without deleting anything of actual importance.
Find out more about CleanMyMac or download it from MacPaw’s website if you want to see if it is the right solution for fixing your startup disk problems.
Note that CleanMyMac also has a number of additional utilities included that can help you delete programs, perform maintenance, deal with privacy issues, securely delete files, and more. It’s a really useful tool that can help you solve a lot of the problems you might currently be experiencing with your MacBook Air.
The makers of CleanMyMac also have another program called Gemini that you can use to remove duplicate files from your Mac, too. The combination of these programs can really help you to keep your Mac clean, and you get a 30% discount on Gemini if you already have CleanMyMac. You can check out the CleanMyMac and Gemini bundle here.
Disclaimer: Most of the pages on the internet include affiliate links, including some on this site.
You may wonder what scratch disk is when you can't open Photoshop because of the scratch disk error. The error says 'could not initialize photoshop because the scratch disks are full'.
Also, similar errors such as 'could not complete your request because the scratch disks are full', 'could not use the type tool because the scratch disks are full' are also bothering Photoshop users when they are trying to crop an image or make another editing in Photoshop.
In this post, you'll learn what scratch disk really is and how to fix the Photoshop scratch disk full on Windows and Mac. There are permanent fixes to make the error gone for good.
Why Is Photoshop Saying My Scratch Disks Are Full?Macbook Air Startup Disk Is Full
What is a scratch disk? A scratch disk on PC/Mac is the hard drive that Photoshop use as virtual memory to store temporary files when there is not enough RAM for the temp files. When you are opening or working on a huge project in Photoshop, there could be lots of temp files. When there is no room in both the RAM and the scratch disk for the Photoshop temporary files, the 'scratch disk full' error is triggered.
Some of you may notice that Photoshop shows scratch disk is full even when there is a lot of free space on your computer. That's because not all of your free space on a hard drive is assigned as scratch disks for Photoshop.
To fix the Photoshop scratch disk full error on Windows or Mac, there are mainly 2 kinds of solutions: one is to clear scratch disk to free up more space; the other is to assign more scratch disk space for Photoshop. Read on for the specific steps to fix the errors.
1. Change/Increase Scratch Disks
Since the drive that is used as the scratch disk of Photoshop is currently full, you can change the scratch disk settings to allow Photoshop to use more memory space. You can either change the scratch disk to a drive with more space or select multiple drives as scratch disks. Here is what you should do.
If Photoshop is running right now, go to Preferences > Scratch Disk. You will see all the drives that are available on your computer. Select another drive with more space or tick multiple drives for scratch disks. Click OK to save the change.
If Photoshop can't open, start Photoshop and at the same time, hold down CMD + OPTION keys on Mac(CTRL + ALT keys on Windows), which will bring up the following Scratch Disks Preference menu. Select another disk for the First scratch disk or add another drive as the second/third/forth scratch disk. Click OK.
Tips
Now restart Photoshop and the program should be able to initiate without error.
2. Clear your Photoshop cache
Some users found that clearing caches of Photoshop help to fix the scratch disk full error. Photoshop allows you to purge cached data from the Edit menu.
Step 1: On Photoshop, click Edit > Purge.
Step 2: There are 4 types of caches you can clean.
Step 3: Select one of the caches(undo, clipboard, histories, video cache) to clean or click All to remove all caches.
Tip: If a cache item is greyed out, it means that there is no such kind of cache files on your computer.
You should know that after clearing caches of Photoshop, you are unable to restore to the previous version of your project.
If Photoshop can't open because the scratch disks are full, you can clean up Photoshop cache with a cleanup tool.
If you are using Photoshop on a Mac, FonePaw MacMaster can help you clear app caches without opening Photoshop.
Learn more at How to Safely Clear App Caches on Mac.
3. Delete temp files
Photoshop may create massive temp files on your Windows or Mac, which is the culprit why the scratch disks are full. You can manually delete temporary files of Photoshop to empty the scratch disk.
On Mac
Method 1: Open Spotlight and enter 'Photoshop Temp' to search for the temp files in the entire hard drive. The Photoshop temporary files are started with '~PST' or 'Photoshop Temp' and ended with the file extension '.tmp'.
Method 2: Launch Terminal, enter the command 'open /tmp' and hit Enter, which will open the temp folder. Now find the temp files of Photoshop and delete them.
On Windows
You can navigate to the location of temp files on Photoshop in the following path:
After the temp files are removed, run Photoshop to check if the scratch disks full error is gone.
4. Clear disk space
If your hard drive has low disk space, it is time for you to clean up the drive to reclaim more free space so that Photoshop can run smoothly without a problem.
If you have a Mac computer, FonePaw MacMaster can help you clear disk space by cleaning the following files.
Your Startup Disk Is Full Macbook Air
You can restore lots of free space on Mac by simply clicking the Clean button on MacMaster.
Once there is enough free space on your computer, scratch disks should have enough room to run Photoshop without errors.
5. Defragment hard disk
Some users fix the scratch disks full error by defragmenting the hard disk. If Photoshop is telling the scratch disks are full while there is still enough free space on your computer, you can defragment the hard disk to get contiguous, unfragmented space for Photoshop. However, you don't need to defragment your computer if the computer is using an SSD. Only the mechanical drive needs to be defragmented.
Windows provides a built-in disk optimization tool - Defragment and Optimize Drives for you to easily defragment your drives. You usually don't need to defrag a Mac as most of them run on SSD drive.
6. Increase the RAM allowed by Photoshop
After you have fixed the scratch disks full error in Photoshop, you can stop the error from happening again by assigning more RAM for the program. Here is how to do that.
Step 1: Click Edit > Preferences > Performance.
Step 2: Move the sliders to increase the RAM memory that you let Photoshop use, although the RAM the Photoshop can use should not be over 80%.
One more tip: Fix 'scratch disk full' error when cropping an image
Macbook Pro Won't Boot Up
If you get the 'scratch disk full' error when cropping an image in Photoshop, it is likely that you have entered the wrong values for the size and resolution, for example, enter 1080 x 1920 when the unit is set as inches, which force Photoshop to create a file that is too large in size, thus the 'scratch disk full' error is triggered.
Photoshop requires massive storage space to run smoothly. To ensure the best performance of Photoshop, clean your Mac or PC on a regular basis is a good way to go.
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