Disc Full Warning
I have a 1TB hard drive on my Mac. It was less than half full before using ON1. During todays's session while editing in ON1 I had a disc full warning and my system went into meltdown. Clearing out some stuff and moving other stuff around I was able to clear enough room on the disc to get my system working again. Checking for large files I found that ON1 Perfect Browser Cache contained a folder called Watched Content that contained nearly 300GB of data. I have a limit of 5000Mb set for the browser cache.
I looked under preferences/system I clicked the Empty button for the cache, nothing changed. I'm wondering now if I should just completely uninstall ON1, if I do it will probably never go back on my system again, or if I can just delete this folder and try again. Has anyone else had this problem? I really want ON1 to work but it seems as if all the odds are against it ever being viable.
I've contacted Support but they have not replied. To be fair, my language was not the sweetest, but it has been one thing after another and I am at the end of my tether.
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I have about 50,000 photos and my entire On1 folder, including cache, is about 45gig.
If you have another drive with more room you can move the cache there. Personally, I moved the entire Roaming folder (Windows) to another drive. (Note: if you relocate Roaming, you still have to relocate the Cache seperately)
If you feel that your cache shouldn't be that large, I suggest you contact support about it.
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I bought an external SSD and moved both my preview cache and scratch space there. I have ~13K images and the scratch drive never uses more than about 19GB.
Something is definitely wrong here. Give support a chance to respond. Plus members get "priority support" and it can still take a couple of days for a response.
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I had a similar problem with my cache going up to over 100G. This was on 2019.5 on Mac.
I reported this to support and was told that this was as designed, the cache limit seems to linked to some form of working cache not the full thumbnail/preview cache.
I assumed that the size was linked to number of folders I had catalogued and in doing a big clean out when upgrading to 2019.5.1 I didn't catalogue so many folders. I moved the cache folder to another drive and size is much smaller and now on disk with more free space.
This does seem to be an area that On1 need to revisit since one needs to catalogue folders in order to do full keyword searching, but in most cases those with big libraries don't really need quick access to most of the images only those that are being worked on.
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OK, thanks for all the advice. Got a few things to try, but will probably wait until the next update which will be crucial to my decision. It’s a love/hate thing. Love the editing side of ON1 but the cataloguing is ‘Contravening Reasonably Acceptable Parameters’, as they say.
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Watched Content needs to have some sane maximum, please.
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In on1 Preferences, change the PerfectBrowseCache>Watched Content folder to a convenient location.
Then empty it when it gets too full..
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As I mentioned above, get a small SSD drive dedicated to ON1's use. Mine is 120GB. Move the both the browser cache and the scratch space there. You'll see a noticeable improvement in performance and no worries about how much space the browser cache occupies.
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Thanks for the great thread - I have had this again and again over the last year. I have a LOT of photos, and the last few days I have been adding a lot more from a recent trip. I would like to get round to culling them but need more time, and making disk space takes up lots of time...
I get around it by deleting this folder from time to time, but that seems wasteful. It just hit 110 Gb and my SSD system disk froze up. I have an external drive, but I think that would slow performance. I agree that we need to be able to set sane limits on this watched content folder. Deleting the contents seems to be counterintuitive. Cheers.
ETA - Well I tried moving the PerfectBrowseCache to the external drive, and it seemed to work, but next time I went back in, it was in the default location. Frustrating indeed. I guess I'll just have to delete those files from time to time.
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Jane, 2020 has new options when creating a catalogue. You can choose the size of the previews.
From Page 26...
For most purposes, you’ll want to choose the default preview size, Standard, but if you are working with a system that has constrictions on disk space, or have a network connection to your cataloged folder, choose either Medium or Minimal.
If you wanted to use this, I don't think you can change it on the fly. You'd have to delete your catalogues and recreate them with the new setting.
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Hi Rick - Good news - another reason to like the new version. I'm using it, and haven't seen that setting so far, so I look forward to reading the manual. So to "delete your catalogues", does that mean deleting everything in the PerfectBrowserCache after changing the setting? Or perhaps it is explained in the manual. :)
Thanks!
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Well, you say you've been deleting them anyway, but I would remove the catalogues in On1 first just to be safe. I don't know what version you're using, if you need to update to 2020 then you might consider removing the whole works and starting fresh.
Brian posted instructions in another thread...
https://on1help.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360054522531/comments/360008133452
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I've found that using the Move function to put the PerfectBrowseCache in a different location does not remove the existing cache from the boot drive, it just copies it to the new location.
After I make that change I immediately Quit the program then relaunch it. Now I can go back to the Finder and delete the cache from the boot drive.
There is a gotcha though, if for some reason the external drive holding the cache is not available when the program launches it will throw up a dialog telling you it is going to revert to the default location. When this happens to me I Force-Quit the program and remount my scratch drive then restart the program to prevent it from recreating the cache on the internal drive.
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Hi Brian,
I noticed the "revert to the default location" behaviour myself and decided it was better to stick with it as I have the SSD system drive.
What I ended up doing in 2020 was removing my catalogued folders as everything was defaulted to the larger Standard size preview, deleted everything in Watched Content, closed the program, started it up, and added my Pictures folder to the catalogue again. When it asked me for the preview size, I said Medium and left it overnight to regenerate. The Watched Content folder size is now much more decent and not threatening to take over my system drive again.
Glad to have, hopefully, this problem in the past now. :)
Cheers
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I don't know if you have this option on a Mac, in Windows I moved the entire Roaming folder to another drive so technically On1 is still at the default location.
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That can be done on a Mac but it isn't the easiest thing to do. Better is to get a dedicated SSD for the cash & scratch space.
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Hello,
I'm just experiencing exactly the same problem. For me this is incorrectly designed for a couple of reasons I have to ay I'm afraid:
1) Preview Size can be set but the storage for previews can't be limited
2) I see no option to only create previews for content I'm actually working on not for everything
3) I see no option to select the location of the perfect browser cache on the MAC
4) I see no option to delete the previews from the program
5) It's not clear to me right now what happens if I change the preview quality from Standard to minimal after standard previews have already been created?
This is really frustrating because I actually bought a 1TB SSD just to have all my 560GB of pictures on it since this did not fit on my 512Gb system drive. But now I have 405GB of previews on it still.
Biggest issue I see is that this does not scale at all and there are limits to how much storage you can add to your device. Even more so it also dramatically increases the size of your system backup which seems to be the ON1 best practice to backup your catalog.
I hope they realize the problem and add new features to address it.
Thanks,
Thorsten
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3) I see no option to select the location of the perfect browser cache on the MAC Check the Preferences > System tab.
5) It's not clear to me right now what happens if I change the preview quality from Standard to minimal after standard previews have already been created? One would assume the large previews will be replaced by the small previews reducing the space requirements for them.I highly recommend adding an SSD dedicated to ON1's use. Move the PerfectBrowseCache and the Scratch space to it. You'll see a dramatic improvement in performance and you will not need to worry about the size of the preview cache.
I see no point in removing previews the program has generated. If they were to be removed the program would have to rerender them the next time you went to that folder causing a big performance hit as you waited for all the folder's previews to be generated so you could see them again. It also adds a layer of complexity to the program that most users will not want — having to manually manage you previews.
Even more so it also dramatically increases the size of your system backup which seems to be the ON1 best practice to backup your catalog. Configure your backup system to ignore the PerfectBrowseCache. Mine is set up to ignore the entire SSD I added for it and Scratch space.
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Thorsten, you might find this guide to caches & catalogs helpful. https://on1help.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360035750991-Catalogs-and-Caches-ON1-Photo-RAW-2020
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Hi Brian,
Thanks already for your great feedback and recommendations.
I also have to apologize, I found I hadn't installed the latest update which might explain why I didn't find the option you are showing. its exactly what I was looking for.
I did buy a dedicated SSD for my catalog but I do not have another one dedicated for ON1 previews and caches in addition. is that what you suggest or can I have the original pictures (the catalog) and scratch and previews on the same SSD with great performance?
Thanks,
Thorsten
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2) I see no option to only create previews for content I'm actually working on not for everything
4) I see no option to delete the previews from the program
There are 2 caches the program uses. First is the PerfectBrowseCache where all the image previews are stored. This one you have little control over except its location. It is tied to the program's databases for searching, etc. Second is the Browse Cache which is more of a working cache. This one caches just the most recent locations you've browsed. This one you do have control over its size and you can flush it if desired. From the article I linked above:
The Browse Cache stores small .jpg previews of photos you have previously viewed or cataloged. These make it faster to browse and preview the same photos again. You can adjust the amount of disk space used for previews of non-cataloged folders by adjusting the Cache Size. The default 5000mb (5gb) size is enough to store previews for about 5,000 photos (depending on screen size). When you reach the cap you have set, the oldest previews are removed. .Jpg previews of photos in Cataloged Folders are not removed and are not governed by the Cache Size slider. You can also Move the cache location. This is handy if you have limited space on your boot volume. If you are working on a laptop with a small internal hard drive, setting the cache location to an external disk, such as the one you store your photos on, allows you to catalog more photos. Emptying the Browse cache removes all the previews for stored for frequently browsed photos; Previews from Cataloged Folders are maintained.
This is something I've been confused about too, the separation between the two.
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Yes, I would separate the photos (catalog) from the Scratch space and the PerfectBrowseCache.
That is how I have my laptop set up and it has worked well for me as I've migrated my photos from 2 different desktop systems to 2 different laptops over the years. All I had to do to migrate my photos is attach the drive to the new system.
I've also separated my editing software's scratch space to a dedicated drive started back in my Photoshop days for performance reasons. I'm going to look at moving the Browse Cache to the scratch drive as well as I have a small internal boot drive in this laptop and it will be nice to recover that space.
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Understood. I'll have to share the drive for now to make sure my system drive is not affected. I believe I have no free SATA port anymore but maybe I can move the original photos to an external disk and have the previews on the faster internal SSD.
In any case, let me read all you linked to carefully so I understand the concept properly before taking final actions.
Again, many Thanks for your great help, much appreciated!
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FWIW, this is what my setup looks like. The Scratch drive has a direct connection to the laptop for highest I/O speed, the other drives are connected through a dock or ethernet. This leaves me 2 Thunderbolt ports on the laptop for other purposes.
I also have other external backup drives that will automatically back up their corresponding data drive when I connect them to the system.
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Makes sense, will review my storage and backup plan to see what will work best for me with the devices/options available right now.
Thanks!
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