Jpeg File loss.

[pattym]

I have all my photos stored on my hard drive, and every now and again I find that I lose some data of my picture files. Initially half of the bottom will be missing, then at a later stage I wont even be able to open them any more, as all the data is gone. I did not think that would be possible with digital storage, but its happened to me twice now.If you know whats going on could you please tell me, because the fact that I don't know which file is going to die next is driving insane. Also the most recent one to disappear is 2Mb, if you would like to study it, I'm sure I could upload it some how.

Thanks in advance.

[Rellik]

What's model/brand is your hard drive? Any other problems besides the photos losing data? This hasn't happened to me before. But if you are running a stable system, it shouldn't be happening. Maybe list the specs on your computer, and how long you've had it.

[Redikulous]

JPEG files performs a lossy compression. Which means that the file will lose information to make the file smaller, so each time that you open it and save it you lose more and more information. PNG LZW and GIFF use lossless compression( you wont lose your information when you view and save) so those are usually better to use, or at least save a copy in.

[neil_g]

sounds more like data corruption to me.

[Jon]

You have got backups, I hope. This certainly sounds like a drive getting ready to die. It's not a compression issue, since you note that you're completely losing part of the picture; data compression will evidence itself in banding of uniform-colour areas.

[teo-bingus]

Backup backup backup, I've got the drive in the desktop, 2 external drives that are usually not on since they're really only for backup and transferring big files, then I burn it all to a DVD everyone now and again.

[pattym]

It looked like data corruption to me too, but it only ever happens to jpgs. I have mp3s data files and everything on the drive, but only jpgs are getting lost (as far as I've noticed).
The drive is a Seagate Barracuda.

[pattym]

In case its possible to gain any information from the actual file, here is the most recent one to slowly disappear.
Corrupt Image (http://www.geocities.com/kriggas_pictures/half_degraded.jpg)

I'm running Windows XP, with 4 Hard drives ranging from 120Gb to 500Gb, all are SATA Seagate drives. I cyclically upgrade them once a year, so none of the drives is ever older than 4 yo, with the one loosing the data being 3 yo at the moment.