Photoshop is deleting my files

On three separate occassions Photoshop has deleted files I am working on. Here's what happens before the file gets eaten:

I'm working on a file when an error message pops up and says, "Can not save file. Too many documents open. Try closing some of the documents before continuing". (This isn't exactly what the error says, but that's the gist of it.) I click "OK" in the error box and Photoshop crashes. After the first time this happened I tried closing other programs to free up some memory, but no help there. At this point, my Photoshop file is no longer visible in the finder, nor the trash. It's simply gone (or so I believe).

Other important info:

- I'm running OS X 10.4.7 on a Quad G5 Power Mac. The system has 4.5 Gigs of RAM, all of which passed multiple hardware diagnostic tests (ran it on a loop). All CS2 software is current in terms of updates.
- The first and second time this happened I had many programs and files open. The third time, however, I had Photoshop, Extensis Suitcase, Word, Entourage, Fetch and Safari, which doesn't seem too overdemanding for the system.
- This has happened both over a network and on my local drive. - The files I'm working on are small in size (less than 10 MB).

Has anyone else experienced this problem before?

The two applications in your list that I keep away from are Suitcase and Entourage but they may not be the villains.

However bad fonts (which Suitcase fails to find) could have some bearing on the problem.

Insufficient System maintenance or a badly fragmented or over-full HD could also be the problem.

How long is it since you last ran Cocktail and DiskWarrior?

The system has 4.5 Gigs of RAM, all of which passed multiple hardware diagnostic tests (ran it on a loop)

All software diagnostics can and do miss bad RAM.

Photoshop is the ultimate RAM test.

Try rearranging the RAM modules, so the smaller, Apple-supplied sticks are on the outside.

"Photoshop is the ultimate RAM test."

Only qualitatively speaking.

For quantitative testing, I suggest you have a read at the following link, Heywood:

<http://macfixit.com/article.php?story=20050524014158525>

Yeah, I read that when someone, maybe even you, posted it a long time ago.

Memtest and Rember missed the bad (mismatched) RAM stick in my FrankensteinMac.

I agree with Ann that Suitcase is a crap program. This, however, is not my computer. It's a work computer, so I'm bound by the software my company uses. I just ran a font diagnostic using Font Doctor 7, which found many bad, corrupt, or otherwise unusable fonts. Rebuilt Suitcase, trashed the font caches and everything appears to be running smoothly on that end.

Went one step further and reinstalled CS2, then ran all the updates. Software on the OS is also current. Ran disk permissions and rebooted.

Will run Rember later tonight. Will report back tomorrow.

Went one step further and reinstalled CS2, then ran all the updates.

Doing this without trashing prefs is quite useless as it puts you back where you started.

Prefs were trashed for both Suitcase and Creative Suite. Followed Adobe's instructions for removing CS2 prior to reinstall.

Any idea why Photoshop would delete the file?

No, but your network would. Or a hardware issue.

Never had Photoshop delete a file but then I don't work over a network.

Have you tried running DiskWarrior? Files may be getting over-written because of damaged headers.

I think this is kind of Operating System problem (Finder error),When too many document open,the Finder can not handle these document.I had this problem many times when i use Classic (9.2.x).Did you restart machine after the crash?if so,look Trash icon then if it inflate it you will find out why photoshop delete file.

Since reinstalling CS2 and rebuilding Suitcase I haven't been able to replicate the problem. Crossing my fingers.

Thanks for all your help!