Please Help! How do I recover an unreadable PSP12 Image?

[Starsuperion]

Okay, so I am working on an art file, it is saved in pspimage format.. (windows)

I save it on my external Hard drive. I detach the hard drive, being in a hurray and not thinking, I do not use the "stop option" on the desktop.. I yank the cord and then head out the door to my class..

later when I get home, I plugged in the external to my laptop. I tried to open my file, and it gives me a "an error occurred while trying to read from the file."

Now I can tell there is data there.. the size of the file is 11MB..

I can open it in notepad and it does say "paintshop pro image.." and then gibberish below it..

I tried to rename it with a psp and a pspimage extension, but that didn't work..

when I try to open it in Paintshop Pro 12, I can see previews of other image files in a little preview box, but that "corrupted" image shows blank?? That data has just got to be there..I know it does..

there just has to be some thing, some way to recover that data.. that was a lot of unique art work, and I do not want to try to redo it, if I even can redo it..

Please Please please help me!!

I have an art deadline and I am panicking!

[Magnatude]

I'm just wondering, you mentioned you were first working on this file while attached to a desktop... is it possible that the file need a file that is on the desktop?

I've had this sort of thing happen with sony (Music) software, and it usually happens when you create a project that uses external files but doesnt actually attach these files to the main collaborated file (its still trying to reference these files that no longer exist... in your case images on the desktop that are not on the laptop)

If I was in your shoes, reattach to the desktop if you can and see if it works. Thats all I can suggest.

[Starsuperion]

I am going to try to reattach my external Hard drive to the desktop once I get to my office later today.. I was thinking that maybe there are temporary files which were being written from the virtual memory to the file, or you are right, maybe there are some resources that the desktop had that my laptop doesn't have that must be referenced in order to see this particular art file..

in either case, I got no sleep last night worrying about this, and I spent a fair amount of time looking for free pspimage recovery software to try to help me..I will let you know if that solution worked..

I wish I could open the file in notepad and fix it manually with the coding.. If I understood what all that Gibberish meant, I could figure out what needs to be adjusted to allow the paintshop pro file on my laptop the ability to read it and recognize it..but I suppose that is just wishful thinking..

[Starsuperion]

to my dismay, it did not work and did not open... I do not know what else to do..

[ajboelen]

I am afraid you will have to consider this work as vaporised.

What most probably happened was that the disk cache was filling up with the bits and bytes of the painting, in the mean time reserving space on the drive itself to put this data. When disconnecting the drive without a proper shutdown, the cache empties (this is highly volatile memory), while the File table maintains the info on the location where to put the data.
Hence you end up with an indication on the space reserved for the data while the data is not yet put there.

Most apps (the well designed once at least) will throw away temporary files when closed. There is a very remote change that you are lucky: Psp is not so well designed, thus pieces or former versions of the painting might be somewhere in the user/...username.../applicationdata/temp directory. Check for files ceated around the time you disconnected the drive and /or closed the app. There might be some strange named file of xx Mb's (where xx matches the size of the the reservation on the external drive) containing a version of the drawing. Change the extension to see whether an image of the content shows. Most probable this is not the final version but a version of x minutes before disconnecting the drive. Odds are low, but you might encounter the file here.

To prevent this in the future, you might disable diskcaching for external drives.

Regards