Error: Failed to write to a temporary file. Probably the disk is full.

[Industry]

This happens to me time and time again with large panoramas,
especially when writing out large output files (like layered large
PSB. I have three drives specified, an SSD (30GB) just for caching
panorama output, my main drive (with roughly 85GB free), and an
external drive (over 1TB free). I generally have the SSD marked as
"preferred", but even if I mark my main drive preferred, I can still
run out of disk space according to PTGUI when there is no way it
filled up the 1TB drive.

Note that the help system warns about not putting your output to the
same temporary drive, but in all cases I output to a network drive
(500GB free). Additionally, the error shows that this is a temp file
being written to one of the temp directories, so I assume the output
file cannot be the issue.

I'm guessing, but could be wrong, that this is a bug -- I just can't
find anyway around it. I'm trying to create my panoramas, but on a
Quad Xeon w/ 8GB RAM it's taking ~8hours and ending with this error --
HELP?

Example error:

\\naomi\photos\Photos - Nikon D3\Panoramas\Projects and Results
\DSE_6497 - DSE_6645 - EMP and Space Needle [Bright Fixed].pts:
Error: Failed to write to a temporary file. Probably the disk is full.

File name: C:\PTGui Temp\NH341737_4648_3164.tmp
Intended file size: 56445120 bytes

[PTGui Support]

Hi,

I need some more information:

- What does Project -> Calculate Required Temporary Disk Space tell you
for this project?

- What exactly is configured in Options -> Folders & Files -> Temporary
Folders?

The problem doesn't necessarily have to be a full disk; have you checked
that PTGui can actually write temporary files to C:\PTGui Temp\ ?

But it might be a problem in PTGui as well; the temporary file creation
could be made more robust. Currently PTGui checks which drive has enough
space for a temporary file and then it immediately creates the file. If
other applications are accessing the same drive in the mean time the
disk may have become full.

Joost

[Industry]

Calculate Required Temporary Disk Space says: "Stitching this project
requires at most 282.99 GB of temporary disk space. In the configured
Temporary Folder(s) there is currently 1283.73 available, so there
should be enough space."

In temporary folders I have the following:

C\:PTGui Temp (Internal harddrive, 85GB Free, preferred is checked)
F:\PTGui Temp (Internal SSD, 30GB Free, preferred is checked)
E:\PTGui Temp (External USB drive, 1.1TB Free, preferred is NOT
checked)

Yes, I'm pretty sure it can write to it because I see both my C and F
drives filling up while PTGui is working.

> > Intended file size: 56445120 bytes- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Joergen Geerds]

you might want to change the order of your drives:
F:
E:
C: (preferred unchecked)

basically, the last thing you want to do is fill your system drive to
the rim. windows and other apps will stop working, or other nasty
things might happen. always start with the fastest/largest disk first,
and only use the system drive for emergencies.

joergen

[Joergen Geerds]

uhm, I didn't see that the 1.1TB drive is an external USB drive... USB
is probably the most undesirable connection to a ptgui scratch disk I
can imagine (other than a webdav drive). if you have room in your PC,
try to mount it internally via sata, or at least via pata. or buy
yourself an extra fast sata disk to mount internally... you are
running out of space anyway :-)

joergen

[Bill Heller]

You may want to check the file systems of all of your drives. You'll want NTFS. If they are Fat32 there is a 4 gig file size limit that you may be hitting that will cause a disk full error even if there is plenty of space. Some USB drives still come formatted Fat32 for compatibility.

Go to "My Computer" in Windows Explorer and change the view to "Details" you will see a column for File System.

-Bill

[Industry]

They are all NTFS -- I'm running Vista x64 with a very high-end
system, but thanks for the thought

> >> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[Industry]

Regardless of whether the ordering is perfect, the result is still an
issue (that I can tell) with PTGui, and thus the thread. Worst cast
is that this should be slow, not error out.

As for drive space, all of my photos are stored on a redundant server
and accessed from their, so local space is really just for programs
and temporary files (like these)

[PTGui Support]

Then probably the problem is that the C: drive gets filled by other
applications at the same time and there is less space available than
PTGui thinks at first. I agree that PTGui should not fail in such a
case, but fall back to the other disks. I'll see if this can be fixed.

But still it's never a good idea to let any application completely fill
up the C: drive, you will encounter other problems in Windows. I would
recommend making your system even more high end by adding an internal
(or external eSata) drive for temporary storage.

Joost

[Greg Takacs]

I just want to make sure you know that It is not an issue with the C:
drive. It is an issue with PTGui.

I have ran into the very same problem on 8.2.1 x64 and I did not use
my system drive for swap.
http://groups.google.com/group/ptgui/msg/ea57afc04fc0129a

I have used an 8GB RAM drive and a 600GB RAID0 array with nothing on
it. the 8GB drive was set to preferred. There were no other writes or
uses of the 8GB RAM disk or the RAID0 array other than PTGui.

I'd also venture to say that you might want to add in a similar
feature to preferred hard drive usage as you do for memory usage to
limit maximum usage on the drive. Maybe you should be allowed to enter
"Leave at least 20GB free on this swap location". This would work for
system drives better.

I'd also recommend being able to set memory usage limits with hard
numbers instead of percentages. 67% memory limit default on a system
with 12GB RAM just seems way too low. I'm not saying I can't do the
math, but it's a lot easier for me to say I want to leave 1.5GB free
for OS instead of leaving 12.5% free. Plus 1.5GB will mean 1.5GB no
matter what RAM I have installed in my machine. BTW the memory
management system seems to be broken in 8.2.2 x64, see my earlier
post.