“A system temporary folder is being used for storage of image swap files."?

trackerthedog

New member
I have just installed PixInsight on my desk top and am wondering what to make of a notification/message that it has given me.
Since I am not overly proficient or computer savvy, I'm wondering if anyone can tell me what action(s) I should take in response to
this message. I would appreciate any advice. Thank you.

The message/notification is this:

“A system temporary folder is being used for storage of image swap files.

Be aware that files stored on system temporary folders may be deleted automatically by the operating system and/or file management utilities, depending on specific platforms and system configurations.

If you use one of these folders to store image swap files created by PixInsight, you may have problems if some swap files are removed while the associated images or projects are still being used in a running instance of the PixInsight core application.

You can define swap file directories with the Preferences process, Directories and Network section.”
 
you should move the swap file location to somewhere else but the default.

on macosx there's the risk that the temporary areas that are provided by the system get cleaned out every few days, and when something deletes all the .swp files you won't be able to save your project.

rob
 
I just received my AMD threadripper windows 10 desktop and got the same message. Sorry but I am a little more computer illiterate. Can you explain how and where to move it?
 
Edit > Global Preferences > Directories and Network tab

under "swap storage directories", click Add and specify some folders somewhere on your hard drive that is safe. you can add more than one directory - if you have an SSD then 4-8 folders per disk is recommended by the tooltip.

after doing this, click the round button at the bottom left of the Global Preferences window in order to save the settings.

rob

Screen Shot 2020-06-02 at 8.43.52 PM.jpg
 
Rob- mine said C:/Users/donza/AppData/LOcal/Temp. So, I delete that and add 4-8 new folders called swap1, swap2, , etc for example? I would place them in my D: drive that is SSD. Does that sound correct?
 
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yes - exactly right.

the # of swap directories really depends on the speed of your SSD. you might start with 4. you can run the benchmark script to see how it performs and then add more and run the benchmark script again to see if adding more directories speeded things up.

rob
 
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