Why would ai and pdf files instantly disappear on My Book external Drive

howard

New Member
Please Help! I had been working on an illustrator file for 2 weeks and had it saved in my Mybook as a PDF and illustrator file. I went to email it but at 49 Meg it was too big to attach to my email. I tried saving it as a .eps and my computer completely froze so I had to restart the system. When I fired back up the shortcuts for my files were there but the originals are gone. I ran diagnostics, nothing. I tried to do a system restore, nothing. I tried to do a file recovery on one of the free trials, nothing.
 
windows or os-x?

At a guess I'd say that what happened is that the file was actually being written to when your pc froze and you ended up rebooting it which has likely corrupted the file. I have seen pc's lock up with large transfers to external drives, especially network based ones due to the peculiarities of the users set up.

You could try looking for the autobackup (link) but it might unfortunately be a case of you've lost the file.

Most of us use a multiple copy approach to storing files, with this thread giving you an idea of how some of us work. I'd also add that I save new versions at key points in my work (3D not illustrator admittedly but same principles apply) as well so at worst I've still got an older copy.
 
windows or os-x?

At a guess I'd say that what happened is that the file was actually being written to when your pc froze and you ended up rebooting it which has likely corrupted the file. I have seen pc's lock up with large transfers to external drives, especially network based ones due to the peculiarities of the users set up.

You could try looking for the autobackup (link) but it might unfortunately be a case of you've lost the file.

Most of us use a multiple copy approach to storing files, with this thread giving you an idea of how some of us work. I'd also add that I save new versions at key points in my work (3D not illustrator admittedly but same principles apply) as well so at worst I've still got an older copy.

Thanks for help!
 
Hi,
Have a search for 'AITEMP' on your HDD, if you are lucky the temp file was not cleared out when you had your crash. You will probably find a few files with this string in it.
You could try renaming it to .ai or .pdf and try opening it in Illustrator. There is no guarantee that this will work but at the amount of options you are looking at this is probably the best.
Likely these are in you scratchdisk folder so you could look there first.
If that does not help, then you can try to use a utility Illustrator Recovery Toolbox. In about such cases like yours it often brings many benefits, at least to me it is very helpful. I think that you will also be able to help. Illustrator Recovery Toolbox - a powerful tool for recovering corrupted Adobe Illustrator files
 
I lost a whole folder of InDesign files - not only in that folder but all the subfolders too - I know it's not illustrator...

But just to say - whenever I work on the Mac I have nothing but issues with files disappearing and such like.

Never happens when I'm working on Windows machine.


At the time, I was doing a batch save and InDesign crashed - the recovery data was lost, the InDesign files disappeared and all the sub folders also lost just the InDesign files.

Weirdest thing I had ever seen.

Saying that - I have multiple backups, hard drive, time machine, server backup and cloud.

So I was able to retrieve the work.
 
Thank you guys for your feedback and help. Sorry, that long time did not respond. This is because the issue was solved and I forgot to tell.) Thank you!
 
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