Known Participant

Answered

Your disk copy of image was changed since last opened or saved (Mac OS)

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
March 11, 2011
26 replies
69920 views

I am occasionally getting a message that "the disk copy of image was changed since the file was last opened or saved". The OS is 10.6.6 and I am using CS5. It happens on no specific file. All of my files are pretty big. The current one that this is happening on is a psb that is 3.26 G unflattened. I have from ignorance always ignored the message and saved anyway. I have never detected any damage or discernible changes to the files after ignoring the warning, but after searching Adobe forum and reading a thread about this happening in CS4, I guess I should be more cautious and do a save as and change the file name. I started this thread because no one has reported the issue happening in CS5.

The files were all given to me by ftp as either psd, tiff or camera raw files. I work on duplicates of the originals in no other program but photoshop and opened and closed the files a few times before getting the message about the disk copy being changed. All of my files are saved to an internal harddrive and backed up on a time capsule device. I am on a network, but am the sole user of the network. The files are worked on and saved to an internal hard drive on the same computer. They are never opened on another computer which is usually turned off. I am running no virus protection software except what ever is native to the OS. The only other applications I am running when getting this message are safari, mail and sometimes bridge.

Why am I getting this message and what is causing changes (that I can't detect) to the disk copy?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Chris Cox

The mesage means what it says: something outside of Photoshop has modified your file on disk since the time that Photoshop saved the file.

We don't know what might be changing them -- just that the OS returns a different modification time for the file than what it was when Photoshop saved the file.

A

avalent

Known Participant

Super late reply, Lightroom can trigger this behavior if you opened a RAW image from LR in Photoshop.

Reproduce issue: In Lightroom choose 'Edit in Photoshop', continue working inside PS, save as a .psd

Lightroom makes the .psd part of the catalogue and creates previews for on any changes made in PS.

Solution: In Lightroom, remove the .psd from catalogue/collection. This will not delete the file.

A

avalent

Known Participant

Alternatively, the auto-save feature can do this too I think 🙂

A

Alex Furness

Participant

Hi everyone, on Mac / System Pref / Date & Time / Time Zone... by unchecking 'Set time zone automatically using current location' the problem has resolved for me on CS5.5. hope that helps.

Deedge

Participating Frequently

That's interesting Alex. I've been meaning to post here that I haven't seen the problem since CS6, but if it does return, now I know one way to fix it.

O

Optimistic_introvert16B8

Participant

I just had this problem on CS6... first time I ever encountered it.

I believe the reason was that after opening some images using Bridge, I changed the star rating while the photos were open.

M

mindsi davino

Participant

I am seeing this message constantly, now. It appears most frequently with larger files. I don't have any other clues to offer. I originally thought it was time machine related, but afer reading other posts and watching time machine patterns, I don't think it's involved.

I don't use Suitcase. I do use dropbox, but these files are all stored locally.

Please keep offering suggestions and ignore off-topic rants. It just makes reading the thread longer and more painful.

Thanks to all.

A

Anonymous

Previous discussion, either in this thread or another, illustrated that DropBox was messing with files it was not supposed to.

How do you have Finder set to display previews?

A

Anonymous

Re: "Your disk copy was changed..." Here's what fixed it once and for all for me (Mac OS 10.7.3, Adobe CS5, Suitcase Fusion 3 version 14.2.0):

In Suitcase Fusion drop-down menu, go to "Manage Plug-ins..." and disable all plug-ins for Adobe CS products. Manage fonts and sets manually (i.e., either leave desired fonts active permanently or activate temporary sets at startup). Quit programs and restart.

R

Rick Meikle

Known Participant

FWIW, Daring Fireball (John Gruber) provided a link to this article by Pierre Igot that points the finger at dubious decisions by Apple in their new autosave scheme, which indicts Lion's file version management: http://www.betalogue.com/2012/03/27/lion-autosave-2/

A

Anonymous

Very interesting article. Thanks for the link, Rick.

A

AnnaStesia1632

Participant

Hello,

just wanted to chime in and say I've encountered this annoying behavior since a few weeks. I can't imagine what has caused this bug, no spectacular changes to my system (at least none that I'm aware of). This thread hasn't been very enlightening for me so far… I'm using CS5 and Snow Leo, no extensions, no Suitcase, Dropbox, Spotify, whatever else has come up as possible error sources.

What I ask myself now: could these messages be a sign of a damaged or dying hard drive? Because my hard drive seems to "working" more than necessary (by that I mean the reading/writing noise) and I believe I always get the message while the HD is busy. Oh, and also when the interval between saving the document is rather short, like less than 2 minutes or so.

P

Planet Frog

Participating Frequently

Anna, if your hard rive is working overtime, it would be wise to run Apples Disk Utility as soon as possible in case the drive is failing.

My experience is there are usually 2 main reasons a drive starts working overtime when you're using Photoshop;

The first is if you use your main boot drive also as a Scratch Disk for photoshop (the same one the operating system is installed on) and the drive starts getting full, or the data on the drive starts getting spread all over the place - then photoshop has to work the drive really hard to find places it can read and write to. It also makes the system a lot more vulnerable to producing disk related errors.

The second is the drive is starting to fail and needs replacing!

My experience also is a drive can be failing and you may not even know it. A while back I ran Apples Disk Utility across one of my drives that I use often that appeared to be working fine, and it was actually starting to fail, so you don't necessarily know it's happening till something big goes wrong because some drives have built in error correction that hides it. It can start with small sector errors on the disk that can turn into a big disaster over a period of time! The worst part is if you have been backing up to time machine and the errors started a long time back, Time Machine duplicates the errors to backup, so it's best to store time machine drives when they get full instead of letting old files get over written if you can afford to. I have a removable drive case so I just pull out the old drive and put in a new one. HD's are getting cheaper now so it's become more affordable.

The thing with Photoshop is it is a very disk intensive program because often you can be working with big files and Photoshop is scratching data to the Hard drive a lot - so it's probably one of the fist programs that can show errors at a disk level. And for the same reason you may not see the errors in any other software because other programs often don't use the disk as much.

It's also a very good practice to have a complete separate hard drive partition set aside purely for Photoshop to use to read and write to while it's working (a 'scratch disk') as it reduces load on the system and gives both much stronger system and performance stability.

If you have never used apples Disk Utility before, reply to the post and I'll give you instructions.

If you don't have a separate partition set up at the mo, say so and I'll give some advice to get it done easily.

Also - can you remember installing ANY new software or plugins in the last few weeks before the error started. Think hard because it could give us a clue if that is the cause. Or alternatively - did you do anything at a system level that was a big adjustment?

P

Planet Frog

Participating Frequently

Thanks for your replies! I managed to reduce the HD working time a little bit by adjusting the Spotlight settings.

Your answer, Planet Frog, has made me scared - I'm on a 5 years old Macbook Pro, and maybe my HD really decided it's time to say good-bye, slowly but surely… I don't have a separate scratch partition and I'm afraid to mess with these things right now. But for my next computer (or next HD…), I will stick to your valuable advice! The disk utility says that the SMART status is ok., so I just keep my fingers crossed and hope that the Time Machine will work when the final hour has come…

The last big adjustment I did was putting new RAM (which seems to work fine) in my computer and upgrading to Snow Leo, about half a year ago. I *think* I get the Photoshop message only since a few weeks, but I could be wrong. I've been underwhelmed by Snow Leo and wouldn't be surprised at all if it turns out to be the guilty one. Since the upgrade, I experience all kinds of funny behaviour (no automatic hibernation mode, unstable WiFi, the always busy HD, etc.) and I'm convinced that Photoshop is only the indicator of something going wrong underneath.

Don't stress Anna - if the SMART status is Ok, your drive should be fine. The kind of drive activity you described can be a sign the drive has problems though so a quick check with the Apple Disk Utility confirms that is not the case. Rest easy!

Thanks also for the system related feedback. That info is helpful to accumulate a consensus of what might be casing the error, so all such feedback is appreciated and helps narrow the causes.

There have been posts where users have replaced RAM and the problem has gone, so it's something to be aware of as a contributing factor. If it's only 6 months old it should still be under warranty - and in fact some manufacturers have a full lifetime warranty on their RAM - so what I'd suggest is talk to the people you got it from and ask if you can swap out the RAM for a week or 2 to see if it makes a difference. And let them see the post if they question it (post 95). RAM can fail any old time, there are no rules with it. When it completely fails you'll get Kernal Panics and often the mac won't even start up but there are different degrees of RAM failing - and especially if the errors are sporadic, RAM could be the cause.

In my 16 years of using Macs I've experienced all of the above. I've also had situations where I've installed RAM from 2 different manufacturers on one Mac, and the Mac wouldn't even start up till I pulled on or other of the RAM boards out - so where possible (although it's not imperative if the RAM is from a reputable manufacturer) try an use RAM that is all from the same manufacture in a single Mac.

Also note caligula1's post 157 that if RAM does turn out to be the problem, it would be a good time to do a fresh reinstall of the system as the faulty RAM can corrupt some of the system data so it's a good idea to do this.

Don't stress out though Anna - the main thing is the HD is OK. Although problems starting at the system upgrade could point to the OS, faulty RAM can also make the system misbehave. And more so an indicator if the new RAM went in at the same time the OS was upgraded. The fact that the PSD error is only recent could indicate RAM as a potential cause for you. Might be best to get it checked.

M

mac_gabe

Participant

I get a similar message, not in Photoshop or in Lion (I'm still on Snow Leopard), but it is entirely Adobe generated, reproducible and may possibly have a related cause, so I'll relate it FWIW.

I get the message (somthing to the effect of 'file has been modified by an external application' etc) in Lightroom after using Photoshop Elements as an external editor to edit the file - in one particular circumstance.

Normally there is no problem, the two programs talk to each other properly and the file is saved in Lightroom OK, with no message.

The problem arises when I quit Photoshop Elements while the photo in question is open and unsaved. I then am prompted to save, which I do, and Elements immediately closes. But apparently there isn't time for it to talk to Lightroom with all the info, and that's when I get the message when I return to LR. I usually accept the changed file if I can decipher which version the one I was just editing was.

I have a relatively old computer (2006 iMac) and wouldn't be surprised if the speed of writing to disk had something to do with this, so am not looking for a solution or "helpful advice" for my problem here! I'm just chipping in in case other people may be using Lightroom or hitting close/quit then save.

-

-_JM_-

Known Participant

I can recreate the problem if I alter the metadata in Bridge, for example "starring" an image, but I wouldn't consider this a problem, it's doing what it should be doing.

for those people that see this problem often and it's a problem, can you simply "save as" the file that you have open in PS and then inspect both files? other than the obvious changes to the modification dates/time, image changes etc, wouldn't this point you in a direction to see what has changed?

A

Anonymous

The file change can be as subtle as a preview icon being added in Finder.

L

LonnieSlowrider

Participant

Marian Driscoll & Chris Cox should take the same amount of time they have spent replying to all these posts and DO SOMETHING about this problem. Instead Ms. Driscoll likes to quote people's posts and make fun of them. I have been having this same problem since I upgraded my OS to 10.7 I hate this error! I run into it 10-20 times a day. It is up to Adobe to fix this problem! Do something please. I am not running a font suitcase or dropbox. FIX THIS!

Chris Cox

Legend

Adobe has done everything we can. Every single time we've looking into this, we've found a cause outside of Photoshop.

Not once have we found that this was caused by Photoshop.

Unless you come up with a reproducable case that involves only Photoshop changing the files -- then there is nothing Adobe can do about this problem.

The files are being changed outside of Photoshop, and the user needs to know that when saving to avoid losing work.

Photoshop is doing the right thing here in telling you about an external change to your file.

Something else on your system is doing something wrong by changing the file when you do not expect it to be changed.

J

JRJenny

Participant

I know it's maddeninly unhelpful, but I have this problem as well. It happens most often when I'm working on a file that's 50MB or more, and most of the work I do in Photoshop CS5 easily swells past 100MB (large illustrations will do that to ya before you flatten them). I started noticing it after reformatting my hard drive this December, which had originally been partitioned into a Boot section and a User Data section. My scratch disk settings use my external hard drive as the primary and my internal hard drive as the secondary. I am running 10.6.8, Snow Leopard, no Suitcase or Fusion or anything. Time Machine is inactive. I have 4GB of ram. Whenever the message pops up, my computer begins to run slower as well, and for the past few weeks Photoshop has needed to be force quit because it freezes when I quit out of the application. Does anyone think reinstalling the program would help? This is my second install of this disc onto this machine, but when I got it reformatted, I missed a few programs during the uninstall. Will that impact my ability to reinstall?

To everyone in this thread, it's little comfort, but you aren't alone. Maybe Adobe will figure this out soon.

R

Rick Meikle

Known Participant

(A side comment first that these forums would benefit from being able to make a general reply, rather than to a specific post...unless I'm missing it somewhere.)

Since my earlier post confirming that the "Suitcase fix" resolved the problem, it has cropped up again, but only rarely. Given the widespread nature of the problem affecting different users with different configurations, it appears that the Photoshop behavior described by Chris can be triggered by any number of scenarios. Adobe may not consider it to be a problem, and in fact may view it as a feature, even though for many users it is nothing but a nuisance. It appears to be something we have to live with until such time that Adobe either improves or fixes the "feature" and/or makes it something you can turn off.

That's my pragmatic take on it at this point, with the real purpose of this post being to confirm that the Suitcase fix is not a complete fix, nor apparently even close to being one. It just removes one of the more common triggers.

C

caligula1Author

Known Participant

I also want to confirm that the issue has never completely gone away for me. I am the original poster. The issue has occured on both Lion and Snow Leopard. A clean install of the OS, reinstall of PS and replacing bad memory and risers all helped, but occasionally, although much less frequently, I will get a disc copy error message. It doesn't matter what size the file is or how long the file has been open for me. I don't have Suitcase or fusion.

Deedge

Participating Frequently

Just want to chime in that I too have been having this problem. I am using CS5.5 on OS X Lion 10.7.3. I started noticing the problem since installing Lion, so it's been about a year, and I finally looked it up and found this thread.

Sometimes, I open a file, make one small change, save it, and get the error. Other times, it happens to files I have been working on for a longer time. Sometimes, when I am working, it happens every time I save as I work.

Until reading this thread, I thought the issue was purely Lion-related. (Time Machine local backups also seem to be chewing up disk space, and I suspect there is a connection.) However, I see here that many people are having the problem on earlier versions of CS as well as OS X.

I do not use Suitcase or Fusion. I do use Topaz plug-ins. I did change my scratch disk preferences a while back, and also suspect it could be something to do with that. The problem occurs when Bridge is open, and also when it isn't.

My system is old and full of crud. I haven't done a clean install for years, thought I do try and clean it up from time to time.

So... not very helpful, I know, but another voice saying, "Hey, there may be more of us than you think!"

A

Anonymous

If it's any help, I'm still on OS 10.6.8, CS4 and I don't run Time Machine, Suitcase or Extensis and I get the message occasionally, but only on the rare occasion when I'm saving large document files. I don't know why some third party thing would only target those files so I'm not buying adobe's claim that it's not responsible. But there isn't any real world problem, save as works, the files aren't broken or anything, it's just a minor nuisance.

Dave

Show more replies

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded