Error: "could not complete your request because it is not a valid photoshop document"

Question

I was working on a PSD, which was saved to my desktop, when I decided to save it for the nth time within the hour. As I was saving it, my laptop battery died and shut down. After I replaced the battery and rebooted, the file was missing from the desktop - simply gone.

I downloaded some sketchy tools that helped me locate it - but I'm unable to recover it.

Has anyone else had the disappearing PSD issue? If so, how were you able to recover your file?

adamsmo1 · Accepted Answer

Late to the party much, ssprengel?

Adamsmo1, I'm sorry to say I can't think of other means that are likely to work to get your data back.

A quick check of your temporary folder (whatever the TEMP environment variable is pointing to) might be in order, but I really hold little hope for that turning up your file.

A while back I made a suggestion to use the Recycle Bin in the future to store prior versions of files that have been overwritten by a Save (which are now just deleted). Some pooh poohed the idea, but I believe that would have saved your bacon in this case. May I suggest requesting that as a new feature:

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

-Noel

Amazingly, I found a solution while clicking around in desperation:

- Rt-click on the drive that I was saving the file to (ex: C: drive)

- select 'Properties'

- select 'Previous Versions' tab

- There, I found a more recent clean version of that hard drive instance. My file was deep within there, in a non-corrupted state.

Hopefully, this helps others who might be in my same situation.

Thanks for the help, folks.

Noel Carboni · Answer

As I recall, Photoshop creates a temporary file during the save process... Look for a file with a name something like ~ps1234.tmp in the folder where you were saving.

If the machine shut off while actively writing to the disk, it's possible the file system was corrupted. You might want to do a CHKDSK operation to verify it (also available by right-clicking the drive in Explorer when looking at Computer, Properties, Tools tab). It's barely possible that such an operation could recover a file in limbo.

-Noel

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