If your computer has only one hard disk, consider leaving all scratch disk options at their default settings.

If it has more than one, choose large, secondary hard drives for scratch disks and not the main boot drive. In Adobe Premiere Elements, it’s possible to place each type of scratch file onto its own disk (for example, one disk for captured video and another for captured audio).

Defragment scratch disks regularly by using the Disk Defragmenter tool in Windows or a third‑party utility. To use the Disk Defragmenter tool, choose Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. For more instructions, see the documentation provided with Windows or the third‑party utility.

Specify your fastest hard disks for capturing media and storing scratch files. You can use a slower disk for audio preview files and the project file.

Specify only disks attached to your computer. The throughput from a hard disk located on a network is usually too slow. Avoid using removable media as scratch disks because Adobe Premiere Elements always requires access to scratch disk files. Scratch disk files are preserved for each project, even when you close the project. Adobe Premiere Elements reuses these files when you reopen the project associated with them. If scratch disk files are stored on removable media and the media is removed from the drive, the scratch disk won’t be available to Adobe Premiere Elements.

Although you can divide a single disk into partitions and set up each partition as a virtual scratch disk, this doesn’t improve performance because the single drive mechanism becomes a bottleneck. For best results, set up scratch disk volumes on actual separate drives.