I’m not happy.

I’ve been having a lot of problems with my computer lately. It started off about a couple of months ago with my Wacom tablet going on the blink, and after I downloaded and installed an updated driver, it would sometimes take a break in the middle of my working on something and force me to work more slowly and more clumsily without the use of my pen and tablet at the most crucial times.

Then Firefox decided not to work in certain places, prompting me to upgrade to Mozilla’s latest version. Little did I know what a RAM hog it would turn out to be. If I happened to have a browser window open, and I was working on a large file in Photoshop or KnockOut with my pen, something would give, and I’d get the hourglass from hell, where the sand never flows down. My productivity slowed.

I did what I could to fix the problems. I did fresh uninstalls and reinstalls. I scanned and checked my hard disk, defragged it even though it didn’t need it. I changed the memory settings on my Photoshop. I regularly cleared some space. I even screamed at my computer every now and then, hoping I could terrorize it into submission. It would get a little bit better, but not by much. It would always slow down again.

This, of course, is the PC. My Mac is very well behaved.

So today, I planned on creating even more hard drive space to help give the memory some breathing room. I started to do my weekly archiving work files to CD. It started off great until I had to start over with CD #187 because the printer hiccuped and didn’t label it correctly. I was in the midst of preparing to burn CD #188 at the time—a ghost copy of folder #188 was waiting to be burned to CD.

But my Write to CD window never popped up, so I went ahead and copied folder #187 for burning again and found the ghost copy of #188 manually via Windows Explorer. There it was, right below #187, looking ghostly, like it only refers to the original files but has nothing to do with the original files themselves.

And this is half the reason why I did what I did next; the other half had to do with my making sure only #187 got burned in this instance, not #188.

Anyway … I deleted the “ghost” copy of #188.

Not just a plain delete that takes it to the Recycle Bin. I right-clicked and selected from a menu, as is my habit in my never ending quest to clear hard drive space: Send to Shredder. And whoosh! Away it went.

The original files, I thought, were untouched, and I went about my merry way. I burned 187, put it into another CD drive to make sure it was readable, selected an image file from it to label the CD with, set up my labeling software with all the pertinent information, and printed the label right onto the CD.

Then I burned 188. That is, I made another ghost copy, burned the files to CD, put it into another CD drive to make sure it was readable—and at this point it looked fine because all the files were there, and all the file sizes and filenames were unchanged— but when I selected an image file to use as the label, it refused to open in Photoshop.

REFUSED!

And I later discovered it wasn’t just the one Photoshop file. It was ALL the files in the 188 folder, and I wailed like a banshee. I tried opening the files on my Mac, with no success, and I wailed some more.

I went through a slew of emotions—panic, dread, frustration, outrage, anger, despair, and lately, resignation with a bare hint of hope. I consulted Google about it, typing all sorts of phrases that included the words corrupt, files, fix, etc.

I even looked up the shredder information to find that it worked by “security wiping” the files. This is why the files look fine in an index with all the filenames and file sizes intact, but the files themselves cannot be opened.

AURGH!!!!

If anyone, ANYONE, knows how to fix this, please let me know. I am pissed at myself for thinking that I could shred ghost files without affecting the originals. What in the hell was I thinking?!

Fortunately for me, I had other copies of SOME of the files that were “lost”, but my favorite cover in that bunch wasn’t one of the lucky ones. I not only lost the Photoshop file but all the original elements, the stock imagery I downloaded. So I can’t even re-create the file without having to buy the images again.

AURGH!!!!

Are my files gone forever? Or can someone out there help me?

Share this post: