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

[caligula1]

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?

[AnnaStesia1632]

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.

[Planet_Frog]

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.

[AnnaStesia1632]

Thanks again for your helpful replies, Planet Frog!

But I think I've found what causes the message (for me): since I decided to not just click the message away with "save anyway" and look what the Finder says about the file I want to save, I noticed there's always only, and exactly, a ONE MINUTE difference between the created and changed time / last opened time.

That is (in my stupid-user theory!) because I like to save new versions of the document I work on *a lot*, so I can easily go back when I mess something up. I think most people work like that. My documents are usually large with hundreds of layers etc, so when I go to "Save as" it takes a few seconds until the document is saved, and this seems to result in different timestamps, if a new minute begins during the saving process. Next time I hit "Save", I get the message.

Of course I have no idea if this makes any sense, maybe Chris could be of help here?

[MuggeGHQ]

Hi AnnaStesia1632

You know what. It really sounds right. I think exactly the same goes for me. I really think your into something here.

Hope some of the guru guys/ladies here will confirm and/or fix it

Great finding.

[Guest]

This is brilliant, it could explain my experience with saving PSB files, files too big to save in any other format, and may account for why I don't see this message in any other situation.

[Guest]

What is the difference in seconds? Is it exactly 60 seconds?

[AnnaStesia1632]

I don't know the difference in seconds, my Finder only shows the time exact to the minute.

[Guest]

Right, that is why this topic is so difficult for Mac users to report. You'll need to jump to Terminal to see that finer detail.  While troubleshooting, some people here might think that their file has not changed (and that Photoshop is in error to report the change), simply because the time is rounded to the minute in Finder.

There is some voodoo in how Finder displays creation date because the core system doesn't really record it.

http://www.unixtutorial.org/2008/04/atime-ctime-mtime-in-unix-filesystems/

[Guest]

Hi, I'm curious as to whether adobe engineers have gotten anywhere with this interesting behavior reported by AnnaStesia.

[Planet_Frog]

I'll just post a response to the drive partitioning as well in case you do end up heading down that tack and want to give both your system and Photoshop the opportunity to perform to their best - which helps reduce errors resulting from system strain.

These are just my settings, I'm no mac expert, so others may wish to comment as well. I've been using these settings from MacOS 7 all the way through to my current MacOSX 10.6 (it's a pretty standard setup) and they have always served me really well.

All local drives have 3 partitions. The first partition has the Mac OS and all my Applications on it. The second has all my Current Work files. The third partition is my Scratch Disk for photoshop. Doing this means the MacOS doesn't get interfered with by work related files or PSD scratch disk activities. It lets the OS run at it's best in it's own personal space. Splitting off the Work Files to it's own partition is mainly just a management thing for me, but it also means the MacOS again has no interference - all it has to contend with is the System and Applications. For the Scratch Disk I leave it empty - so Photoshop has it's own field to play in when it needs to use the hard drive.

Sizes… I have a 500GB hard drive. The sizes depend on things like how many apps your going to have on the startup disk, and how much space you can afford to give photoshop for a scratch disk. For the startup, be generous. It's a real pain to have to backup and repartition and restore if your startup drive runs out of space. Currently I have 100GB and a selection apps from CS3 to CS5.5 (some of the older apps do things the newer ones can't!) plus a bunch of other apps and that drive is starting to get full. So go for about 150GB if you think your gonna have lots on it. Then I'd set the Scratch Disk to at least 20GB (mine is about 50GB) and let the work stuff land on the space left between those 2 partitions.

If you only want 2 partitions, then just decide on the PSD scratch disk size and the rest is what's left. Remeber that if you do move work files to a new partion and you're using InDesign, Illustrator or any linking application, you may have to relink a bunch of stuff so consider that first. To keep everything intact make sure you name the new drives and users exactly the same as your old setup! That way you should also be able to use the old Time Machine to retore stuff from if need be.

Once you've done the partitioning, make sure you remember to set up the new Scratch Disk as the primary in photoshops performance preferences (tick it and move it up to number 1 spot on the list).

Doing this you will notice over the longer term that system performance stays stable and A LOT less likely to start slowing down and produce errors. One drive for everything is OK at first, but within about 6 months you'll be wondering why everything is getting slow - which is almost as annoying as the photoshop problems this post is about 🙂

[Noel Carboni]

Partitioning a drive and using multiple partitions simultaneously is a sure way to get just about the slowest possible performance out of it. *

It's far better to use a completeliy separate drive for Photoshop scratch, so the hardware can be working in parallel.

-Noel

* This would apply less to an SSD where there's essentially no seek overhead.  Then you'll just get no better performance as if you used the same drive for everything.

[Planet_Frog]

Probably should have mentioned, local drives are Macbook Pros as the workflow often uses all of the Design Premium apps in the course of a single day, and portability is required. So on standard setups additional drives can only be added using USB or Firewire. Noel, you may have some comments or suggestions there. I've always just assumed an external drive would be slower than a local drive partition for a scratch disk? Perhaps that changes with apples new Thunderbolt though?

My main pitch though was that partitioning improves system performance in that the OS is less vulnerable to errors because there is less fragmentation across the disk over the long term. And the OS generally seems to stay stable over the long term as well compared to a single partition setup from my experience.

Mainly suggesting this option for those that have a single partition setup who also experience non third party related errors as a way of ruling out disk fragmentation as a possible cause.

Either that or use a defrag utility fairly regularly, but I find partitioning is just easier.

[Rick Meikle]

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/

[Guest]

Very interesting article.  Thanks for the link, Rick.

[Noel Carboni]

Rick Meikle wrote:

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/

Why do Mac afficionados feel they have to express themselves with arrogance?

''Simply put, this is a change for the worse that takes us back 20 years in user interface design and brings OS X back to the level of brain-deadness usually demonstrated by Microsoft or Adobe software.''

-Noel

[Guest]

Noel Carboni wrote:

Why do Mac afficionados feel they have to express themselves with arrogance? ...

Well, I wouldn't call it "arrogance".   Payback, perhaps.  All in good fun, of course. 

Partially, it's a historical remnant of the animosity and antagonism created almost three decades ago by PC users who derided the Mac's GUI at a time before the first iteration of  and the wide-spread acceptance of Windows, when said PC users made fun of the use of a mouse and proclaimed the superiority of the command-line interface of MS-DOS while looking down at Mac users.

Others parts of the dislike for Microsoft have been added to the mix over time by Microsoft's decisions and practices, and this is not restricted to Mac users, as shown by the numbers of PC users who switch to Mac.

Don't let it bother you.  Younger Mac users and the legions of recent PC-to-Mac converts couldn't care less.

[Guest]

I note that the offending passage you quote is from a blog not connected to this forum or any other Adobe forum.

[Guest]

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.

[mindsi davino]

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.

[Guest]

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?

[Alex_Furness]

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]

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.

[sonsofkali]

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.

[Chris Cox]

Which means the file was modified outside of Photoshop...

[avalent]

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.