We are forever advising people to save to incrementing filenames with large, many layered, PSD files on the Photoshop forum. This is because we see a good few corrupt PSD file threads where computers crashed, or lost power, which corrupts the part saved PSD file rendering it useless. In fact I usually do just this. You can always delete the old versions later if space is an issue. But the project below sort of grew and grew and because I didn't set out to do so much work, so I didn't think to safeguard it.
It took me the best part of a day. The five nearest balls are mostly illustration, as is most of the background camera right (which ironically gets darkened and downsized so you barely see it). The bar in the background was largely rebuilt to reclaim detail, and show the entire name of the pub (which was partially hidden in the original). Plus lots and lots of other work. I even had to fix a square of black card used to flag the strobes which I had maned to leave on the table! We were rushing but that was still sloppy work. So it came as a nasty surprise when I discovered I had overwritten the layered PSD file with a flattened version! 
It was at least, still full res, but I wanted to break out the component elements, and now they are locked in. I don't even know how I managed to do it, as I duplicated a copy-merged layer to a new document to downsize and save out the JPG. So I am going to try very hard to be more disciplined in my workflow with large projects, and have more sympathy for the next person who posts a 'my dog ate my 10Gb PSD file' thread. 
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I feel your pain. I confess, it's happened to me more than once 
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Nancy
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