PSD FILE ZERO BYTES

[lorij60115862]

Just got a new mac running OS Mojave 10.14.6 and downloaded photoshop 2019. Worked on large psd file last for several hours, everything was fine. Picked it up this morning made a few changes and as saving photoshop crashed and the file was not auto recovered even though that option was on for every 5 minutes. When I tried to reopen the file photoshop said it was empty and when I looked the file was actually zero bytes. Any ideas on why auto recovery didn't work and what happened to my psd file/how to avoid this again? TYIA

[Guest]

Hi

Not sure why auto recovery didn't work, I personally never rely on it, to prevent it happening again you need to save incremental backups and keep a separate backup of your important files to either the cloud or another storage location, it's the only fail safe way to prevent lose of work

[Test Screen Name]

Crashes during savexwill sometimes happen, and you often lose the file if that happens. Plan for it with an effective strategy for saving as well as backups. 

[lorij60115862]

obviously on the saving this was just a test run, trying to find answers

[davescm]

Are you working off a local drive or a network?

Dave

[lorij60115862]

this was on a local drive, just out of the box mac

[D Fosse]

Do you have the desktop in iCloud, or local disk? To Photoshop, cloud desktop is equivalent to network and very risky. If that's where you saved to.

[lorij60115862]

actually file was on an ssd external

[davescm]

Hi

See this:  https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/photoshop/kb/networks-removable-media-photoshop.html

Save to local drives and copy to external:

Also use incremental saves (filename001.psd, filename002.PSD ...etc)  , so the worst that can happen is that you step back to the last one.

Dave

[lorij60115862]

thanks for your help Dave

[gener7]

As a Mac user, I set up and run Time Machine at the very least. It's a very simple and basic feature of MacOS and all  you need is a external drive. I've rarely gotten to use it, but it is a safety net.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

[lorij60115862]

sameee. it was just a test

[D Fosse]

An external drive is orders of magnitude more susceptible to loose connections. It doesn't take much to bump a USB3 plug out of position. For this reason alone, never save directly to an external. Save to an internal drive, and copy over (while keeping an eye on the cable). I practice this on a religious level.

[gener7]

You must have a desktop or modified laptop. I agree an internal SSD is a huge advantage over a USB3 drive, but I just train myself to be careful when backing up since I would need to take out the DVD drive to install an internal SSD.

Thinking about it, I might partition a 2 TB SSD and make the second partion a Time Machine one..

[D Fosse]

I run backups myself on USB3 drives. Just never touch it when data transfer is going on.

Actually I feel very uncomfortable with the whole USB3 connector design - it doesn't feel solid at all. It's very shallow and just dips into position with a barely noticeable notch, and it can be wriggled at least 10 degrees in all directions once inserted, with no resistance at all. Not reassuring.

[gener7]

I wonder if there is already an answer for that, either a jig to hold the connector solidly in place or a ruggedized connector. I could look around for that.

[lorij60115862]

So i've had it going for a day or so and recovery is working, I'm working off a local disk. Every time I try to save a large psd as a jpg photoshop crashes. If I flatten it and save it works fine. running 20.0.7