What Is a Scratch Drive?

You can use an external drive as a scratch drive to increase the performance speed of a computer.

A scratch drive is a space reserved on a computer for the temporary storage of information. The space can be a drive, a file or a disk. The information stored is meant to be temporary; if the information begins to take up to much free space, the performance of the computer can be affected.

Storage Duration

The temporary information is stored on a scratch drive for a few seconds in many cases. As soon as a program completes an operation, the space is automatically cleared from the scratch drive.

Complex Operations

Complex operations may fill a scratch drive before the information is automatically deleted. Should the scratch drive fill and not operate properly, you should manually delete the temporary information on the scratch drive.

RAM

The scratch drive will also fill with information when the computer's RAM memory fills to capacity. Manually delete temporary files when this occurs. You can also use an external scratch drive to store the extra information.

References

• Easy Elements: Scratch Disk
• Easy Elements: Scratch Disk is Full
• E Photo Zine: Scratch Disk is Full