Big problem. Files disappear. Why?

**Sweet As** · 13 August 2009, 02:03 AM

Something strange has happened to me twice in the last month. I've gone to open up a file but get the following error message, "That file seems to be empty."

When looking at the file icon the file size has disappeared to 0kb, as shown in the screen capture. Meaning? The file no longer exists.

I'm worried that if this continues to happen, all my files will soon disappear! Anyone have any ideas on what's going on? It's potentially disastrous for me.

**Xcellent** · 13 August 2009, 02:11 AM

Did you save your files on a portable USB or Firewire HD Drive, USB-Stick or any other portable media?

All portable media writes data delayed, some worse than others. Some work smoothly, some don't.

Just throwing some idea here: You could try to recover some files using undelete software like this - but since the file is contains 0 bytes, I doubt it will recover anything. Worth a try though..

**Sweet As** · 13 August 2009, 02:39 AM

No portable media. Hard drive only. Real strange if you ask me.

**Odat** · 13 August 2009, 02:58 AM

I've had this happen to me once in the past (with XXP4 I believe). Just a regular save to my hard drive. There were no messages to say the save failed, so I only discovered it the next day when I tried to resume work.

Since then I make incremental saves on anything important that I work with, partially as a backup method and partially so I can go back and try different things. I do it manually but you could use XaReg to do the same thing automatically.

I can't remember now (and I also couldn't then

) if I finished my session by saving the file and then closing Xara, or by closing Xara and saying that I wanted to save when the prompt came up.

It's never happened since, so the only thing I could think is that I may have closed Xtreme with unsaved work, used the prompt to save, and then there was an error saving that was not displayed/reported and it terminated (possibly as a crash) leaving the file empty.

This is just pure conjecture on my part, though.

**handrawn** · 13 August 2009, 07:55 AM

Hi

check your hard drive for faults as a precaution

faults like this can be caused by read/write errors

**Sweet As** · 13 August 2009, 08:06 PM

Originally Posted by handrawn

Hi

check your hard drive for faults as a precaution

faults like this can be caused by read/write errors

Hi Steve

Wouldn't read/write errors affect a variety of files? This file disappearance has on occurred with Xara files

**handrawn** · 13 August 2009, 08:41 PM

lets suppose part of the hard drive is faulty - lets suppose that part is a part on which xtreme program resides - lets suppose it is intermittent, sometimes it can be read sometimes not - lets suppose that part of the program is crucial to file saving - no other programs will be affected...

all conjecture as I have no inside knowledge of how the xtreme program loads and runs

but checking a hard drive is easy to do - like I say only a precaution ...

**Burpee** · 13 August 2009, 09:34 PM

I've had this happen when using Bryce in the past on very large files. I also got a corrupted Xara save when using some plugin effects. Now I always save incrementally too. My current work is up to save 5.

**Sweet As** · 13 August 2009, 10:37 PM

Originally Posted by handrawn

lets suppose part of the hard drive is faulty - lets suppose that part is a part on which xtreme program resides - lets suppose it is intermittent, sometimes it can be read sometimes not - lets suppose that part of the program is crucial to file saving - no other programs will be affected...

all conjecture as I have no inside knowledge of how the xtreme program loads and runs

but checking a hard drive is easy to do - like I say only a precaution ...

Thanks Steve. I'll check the hard drive then return and report.