Running Photoshop On A Pc Computer,....you Might Find This Interesting.

I posted this on an older and maybe now unread thread last evening,....so I am posting it once again should anyone find it interesting.
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For what it's worth,....One of my primary solutions to ......Reclaim Valuable PC disk space that can slow your PC.

This practice I use almost daily,....I learned this years ago and perform this practice every single time I use photoshop.

I have no particular qualifications other than I have been a photo editor for almost 10 years using photoshop on my PC computers editing hundreds of images for a magazine going into its 26th year of publication.

This post refers to reclaiming rather large of amounts of residual disk space,.....on a PC computer running photoshop.
Here's what I've learned and am throwing it out there for anyone who might like to explore for themselves.

When you use photoshop on a PC,....it creates many, many hidden cache files that accumulate extremely quickly,...these files really add up fast and eat up valuable amounts of disk space.

Humor me for a moment,.....do the following search on your PC computer that runs photoshop,.....

Search your PC computer directory structure for the term> cache*.dat

What you are looking for are fiiles beginning with with the word (cache) followed by 10 arbitrary numerical values followed by the extension .dat

example,......> cache0000012345.dat ONLY these cachexxxxxxxxxx.dat files are applicable,....Other files ending in a .dat extension are not to be touched.

If I am correct,.....your search return an extensive number of these (cachexxxxxxxxxx.dat) files,....possibly in the thousands of these cachexxxxxxxxxx.dat files.


Next,....highlight (select) all these cachexxxxxxxxxx.dat files,.....right click and select Properties,......you will now see the size in MBs or GBs of ALL these cachexxxxxxxxxx.dat files your search just located ,...these represent wasted disk space,......the numbers should astound you.
This used space can exceed up to many, many GBs,....all clogging up and slowing down PC performance,...always growing in size every time you use photoshop on your PC.

ALL These (cachexxxxxxxxxx.dat) files can be safely deleted from your computer,....they are residual cache files, left behind by photoshop,...they have been accumulating for as long as you have been using photoshop on your PC.

Photoshop is placing these files at a directory location designated by your prefference > cache settings in Bridge. Edit > Preferences> cache

In my computer I have a designated extended partition H; that I created and that's where I elected all my (cachexxxxxxxxxx.dat) files are placed,.........

If you havent designated a "cache" location under Bridges preferences> cache,......photoshop could be placing ....ALL THESE..(cachexxxxxxxxxx.dat) files,....into your C; operating system directory,....thusly slowing down your operating systems valuable resources and operating system hard drive space.

Everything I am describing is for a PC computer ONLY,...I have no knowledge how a MAC computer handles everything.

I use this space saving solution on 2 Windows 7, 64bit operating system computers,......as well as on a Windows XP computer operating system.

For those more versed than I on computers,...I am sure there are ways to verify the methods I am describing here.

The first time you do a harmless search for (cache*.dat) files,......should be quite revealing.

I can only attest to the above by my own practices,......I perform this each and every time I use photoshop on my PC computer.

You should be familiar with the PC directory structure or delving into searches and tampering with files as mentioned here.

I hope my lengthy description might be beneficial in some small way.

I am basically a self taught computer user since 1991, I built my first computer from scratch several years ago,.....I am responsible for several PC computers running photoshop and employ these techniques regularly.

By the way my versions of Photoshop I constantly use are CS6 (not the CC version) and CS5.

To give you an example,...I have been editing images in CS6 for the past 3 days,.....maybe 4 or 5 images max,....preparing to post on FAA.
I just performed my cache*.dat search,....and I have 1,654 hidden cache files accounting for 577MBs of wasted space from those files on my H: partition,......which I have just deleted.

Thanks for any interest and I hope any reclaiming of readers hard disk space via my practice results in a leaner and faster operating system.

Marty