Help-- corrupted Photoshop files!!

[Frank Petronio]

Sorry Chris,

In the future, avoid all Symantec products, especially using the "full install." They are the root of many evil gremlins. Stick to Alsoft Disk Warrior and Apple's Hard Disk Utility - they are all you need. Use a Firewall or non-Symantec Anti-Virus if you must, but generally you simply don't need or want them. Norton's has an especially bad reputation amongst ad agencies, design studios, etc.

Your problem may hopefully have to do with a corrupted Photoshop application, especially since your back up copies are unreadable. The other more likely possibility is a failing hard disk (the original one that you were using when you first wrote the file) that might be missing a beat from "stickion." Check your other files made after these - you may be able to save smaller files OK, but when it has to save a larger file, something in the drive goes wrong during the writing.

Try opening the files on another PC. Otherwise, I think you are SOOL. You might try a drive recovery service but they are very expensive ($800 plus).

For future use, it is time to consider replacing the hard drive with a new one. The quality control and reliablity of hard drives has gotten worse, and getting only 2-3 years out of one is not uncommon. You could get two new drives and set up a RAID for even more security.

[Keith S. Walklet]

Chris, this doesn't seem to be a duplicate of your problem, but the file behavior is similar to what I experienced.

FWIW, I twice lost entire Firewire drives of data after upgrading to OSX. I finally traced the problem to the OS9/X relationship. Since many of my applications were still in OS9, I was often operating in Classic Mode or launching OS9 as the start-up disk.

As it turns out, the file storage hierarchy in OS9 and X didn't jive (manuals warn against moving/opening/deleting files created in X in 9 and vice versa).

After twice directing my anger at the "dead drive" manufacturers (thinking incompatibility problems with my G4), I realized the problem was that I hadn't been ejecting the drives when shifting back and forth between OS's, and when I got the "file corrupted" message and the drive icon disappeared a third time, I retraced my steps. I launched OS9, found the drives, ejected them, quit OS9, launched X and mounted the drives. Everything was once again the way it was supposed to be.

That didn't bring back the 200gbs of data I lost in my first two episodes, but I gave my best effort at a making lemonade from lemons by rationalizing that I my Photoshop skills had improved so much since I'd made my earliest digital work, that it was worth revisiting the images anyway. ...sigh, it is still time I'd like back.

[Janko Belaj]

Chris, sad story to read, but there may be a solution... I'm experienced in solving such problems (as I have lost and recovered few files too) but unfortunately can't help you on distance. And my clumsy english is stoping me from describing what am I doing in such situations.
How ever, there are few tools and one more step to chose: I would first try with DiskWarior (great tool, much better than NUM), second, I will try with FileBudy and BBEdit... Yes, BBEdit (the best text editor)... I was able to open file and recover lost headers so file system (including Photoshop as an ordinary "Image File Reader") can recognize my document.
And one step more, try to find MUG (Macintosh User Group) near your home apple.com/usergroups/find, those folk now to be the best support you can find for Mac (I'm vice president of one small group, but I'm afraid to far from you)... Maybe you will have to pay small amount in name of yearly membership, but we usually help anyone in big trouble nomather is he/she our member or not (doesn't apply for firms, of course!).

Janko

[JohnnyV]

Chris,

As mentioned try opening in a different app like Adobe Illustrator, Image Ready or Indesign. Also try opening in Apple's Preview app. Try shareware program GraphicConverter too.

If that doesn't work post to Photoshop forums at http://www.adobeforums.com/ as a number of Photoshop engineers monitor the list and could help you out.

John V

[JohnnyV]

Also I just came across this software called "MediaRECOVER" to recover images on any media - for Mac and Windows:

http://www.mediarecover.com/software.html

[ronald moravec]

I dropped a box of negatives some time ago. I just put them back in.

[Michael Chmilar]

Definitely try reading the files on a different computer.

[Luke_4418]

Is it all or just some of the files that cant be read? Sometimes its the photoshop preferences that gets corrupted and you just have to nuke them. To do this, just hold down ctr+alt+shift (on the PC) just after you've clicked the shortcut to open photoshop, it should give you a message about deleting the preference file. After this you'll have to reset all your preferences, but its very useful in some situations. Good luck!!

[timpane]

The corrupted photoshop files can be easily repaired with third party Photoshop PSD repair tool. It repairs and restores corrupt files in very short time and effectively.

[Lenny Eiger]

This used to happen to me once in a while. The repair utilities sound promising, but the other thing is to upgrade your computer and anything over 700mb go to large document format..... I haven't had anything get corrupted since the days of PS7..

Lenny