Disappearing files in X4

[oldSarge]

Searches don't bring up anything specific to this problem. Maybe someone can help? In a seemingly random way, files occasionally just show up corrupted (thumbnail is white with an X in the center) and no longer open. Image info still shows up but the image is corrupted or lost. I do not have the Preserve feature (or whatever it's called) active, as it didn't seem to have an option to select where the preserved files are stored, and I don't want hundreds of MBs of image files to be stored by default on my small SSD C:\ drive, where my operating system is installed. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why these files disappear. I can not professionally trust a program that exhibits this behavior. Must I now store duplicate file sets, to be drawn from should X4 decide to corrupt my working files at random? Suggestions?

[Ken Berry]

Do the affected files still display correctly in any other photo editing or viewing software? Are they in just one format?

[LindaSue]

I had something like that happening on my computer a few months ago and it turned out that my hard drive was failing and had bad sectors. I'd create pictures one day and by the next day some of them would have become corrupted. It was also happening with other kinds of files, but mostly image files since that's what I mostly do on my computer. I back up my files religiously every day so luckily I didn't actually lose anything. I had good copies of the corrupt files on my backup drive.

[df]

I had something like that happening on my computer a few months ago and it turned out that my hard drive was failing and had bad sectors. I'd create pictures one day and by the next day some of them would have become corrupted. It was also happening with other kinds of files, but mostly image files since that's what I mostly do on my computer. I back up my files religiously every day so luckily I didn't actually lose anything. I had good copies of the corrupt files on my backup drive.

If that is indeed the case then you'll want to run a CheckDisk. On most Windows OSs click Start> Computer> right click the drive> Properties> Tools> Error-checking. Make sure you have both "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" checked, click start. You'll then be informed that this will occur on the next system restart. Depending on the drive, how much data, the cpu capabilities, etc.... this could take a while and should not be interrupted, a restart before you go to bed may be the best time.

As Linda points out, backups are life savers.

[LindaSue]

I had something like that happening on my computer a few months ago and it turned out that my hard drive was failing and had bad sectors. I'd create pictures one day and by the next day some of them would have become corrupted. It was also happening with other kinds of files, but mostly image files since that's what I mostly do on my computer. I back up my files religiously every day so luckily I didn't actually lose anything. I had good copies of the corrupt files on my backup drive.

If that is indeed the case then you'll want to run a CheckDisk. On most Windows OSs click Start> Computer> right click the drive> Properties> Tools> Error-checking. Make sure you have both "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" checked, click start. You'll then be informed that this will occur on the next system restart. Depending on the drive, how much data, the cpu capabilities, etc.... this could take a while and should not be interrupted, a restart before you go to bed may be the best time.

As Linda points out, backups are life savers.

The problem that I ran into is that running CheckDisk didn't show that there were any problems. The computer shop had to run a thorough diagnostic test on my system before they could determine that it was a bad hard drive. The symptoms were very freaky. I would edit a file and save it (plus a backup). When I'd reopen it again short time later it would be fine. By the next morning the file would be corrupted. I had this happen to the same file more than once and it was driving me nuts. I'd replace it with a good copy and the next day it would be corrupted again. There were also other random files that would be corrupted the next day. Sometimes renaming them with a different file name helped to keep them from being corrupted a second time but sometimes that didn't help either. The strange thing is that I had no other indications of hard drive failure. No crashes, etc., just corrupted files because Windows was apparently writing them to the bad sectors. What I don't understand is why they weren't corrupted immediately upon saving them. Also, older files never got corrupted. It was always files that I'd just recently created that went bad.

The good news is that the computer shop was able to back up and restore all of my data. I didn't even have to install Windows or any of my programs. In the end, I only lost one file which I later discovered had been corrupted and had not been backed up.

[Kathy_9]

That is strange that there was a delay in the file becoming corrupted. I know XP doesn't automatically defrag but did you by chance have a third party defrag program running in the background?

[LindaSue]

That is strange that there was a delay in the file becoming corrupted. I know XP doesn't automatically defrag but did you by chance have a third party defrag program running in the background?

No, and I'd never run the XP defrag either. My husband said that he thought XP defragged automatically though. When I tried to do a defrag at that time, it said that it didn't need to be done. So, neither defrag or CheckDisk would work on my messed up hard drive.

[df]

Whenever I went to do a defrag the computer always said it never needed it, no matter how messed up and fragmented the disk was. Absolute swiss cheese looking according to the graphic display. Made me wonder why it ever said that.