Sudden Error: the file appears to be unsupported or damaged

[nycbird]

Hello all,
I've seen a few posts on this, but nothing that has resolved my problem. This is affecting 1'-2' photos out of a catalog of 12''+ and in different locations. It seems totally random as they are not even files I've worked on in LR or PS. This is what I've tried so far:

* Upgrading to LR 2.6
* Saving a problematic file as a copy and importing that
* Opening a problematic file straight into CS3 (error msg there is: this document may be damaged (truncated or incomplete)
* Opening a problematic file into iPhoto or Preview

No results, still screwed up files. Anyone have any other ideas?
Thank you!
nycbird

 

[dj_paige]

Maybe the files actually are damaged. Were you previously able to manipulate them properly in Lightroom or CS3 and now you get this error message?

 

[nycbird]

Hi dj_paige-
Yes, I was totally able to work with them. I'm sure I made minor LR adjustments here and there, but they are in an otherwise series that has been unmoved since I imported straight from the camera around May 2''9. (i.e. DSC_'41', DSC_'411, etc)

 

[Brad Snyder]

I'd be having a look at my hard drive, and making sure my backups were in order, and effective. This may be the first warning that something's getting pear shaped. Lr is a pretty good corruption detector. In my personal experience, this symptom has always been a hardware problem.

Your profile is askew, with Macintosh running XP. What are you actually running? My experience is mostly Windows related.

 

[nycbird]

thanks Brad, I had filled that profile too quickly, I think. I have 1'.5.8. I keep everything on an external drive backed up by Backblaze, but maybe I'll make duplicate files on my hard drive just to be safe. Any other advice out there?

 

[Victoria Bampton]

What file type? Do they open correctly into other programs?

 

[nycbird]

Hi Victoria -
They are JPEG's and unfortunately they don't open in other programs.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I'm sorry to say they are corrupted in that case. It'll be a hardware fault somewhere - disk drive would be my first bet.

 

[nycbird]

I actually just downloaded a back up from one month ago from backblaze (as far back as they go) and they were fine, so the corruption must have happened in the last month.

Victoria -- do you know of any way to run a diagnostic of the hard drive to find out what could have been the problem? secondly, do you have a workflow for storing files in their original state? I haven't been doing that and obviously backblaze will overwrite good with bad, if the file has been corrupted longer than one month. I'd really appreciate your insights on that.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I haven't got a clue on the diagnostics I'm afraid. As far as the long term backups, I write a DVD backup of untouched originals in case of that kind of scenario. One day, this is where the DNG file verification will come into its own, as the verification hash will be written at the time of conversion and hopefully one day Lightroom will be able to scan the whole catalog on command to check them against the files. There's another program by Marc Rochkind that can do that in the meantime, and would warn of changed files.