Was working in Illustrator yesterday and saving files to 3 1/2" disk in drive B that I'll call disk #1. Customer came in and I wanted to show her the artwork I had done for her that I had saved on disk #2. I left work open I was working on, removed disk #1 and inserted disk #2 into B drive. I clicked "File", "Open" and to my amazement, the files from disk #1 were on disk #2 and none of the artwork files. It was as if I instructed the computer to delete files from disk #2 and copy the files from disk #1 to #2, even though disk #1 was not in the drive. I could not do this if I wanted to. I am working in Windows 3.1 and Adobe Illustrator 4.0. This happens about 2 or 3 times a year with me having no knowledge of how or why. Does anyone know what this problem is and a possible fix? Thanks for anyone's help. rcmoon

I would suggest that you save your files to the hard drive, making subfolders for each job. Then copy those files to floppy drives as back ups. Just make sure that there are 2 copies of everything you are working on.

Thanks for info DR. Since I do graphic design if I stored info on hard drive I would fill it up very quickly. That is why I save designs on floppies. Additional information pertaining to this problem. A few weeks ago I took an old computer that had Windows 95 in it and formatted the hard drive so I could load all my old software into it. That done, this morning I opened the same files that I had open on the other pc when the original pc did the B to B swap. A friend sent me an image in e-mail a little while ago. I save it to the same disk that I mentioned in the B to B original statement. I took this disk to the pc that I had formatted hard drive on & loaded all my original software. I closed all the files that were open in Illustrator and then exited Illustrator. I opened Illustrator and inserted this floppy disk, and the pc deleted the e-mail file and loaded the files on the disk that I had had previously open in Illustrator. It seems that since the same problem happened on two different computers that the problem can not be a hardware problem. The only two like variables now are the software and the disk. I can't see where a floppy disk would be able to delete itself and then copy files to itself from a program that had been closed prior to inserting the floppy disk. At this point I am at a total lose. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, rcmoon

Are you sure that the files are actually on the second disk? I have seen similar problems when disks are swapped in a floppy drive if the floppy does not recognize that a disk change occurred. In this case, the system will read the files from a disk cache (I presume) as long as the files had been previously opened on that disk. This can be a disastrous situation if you try saving data on the second disk, since the system will be using the wrong disk index, and previous data will be overwritten. You might try first saving your active data to the first disk, then remove the disk and attempt to read a new file from it. You should get a not ready reading drive b: error. Now, try inserting the second disk and reading the data.

I've manipulated graphic files of up to 4MB with less than 10MB HDD space and even when they've been resampled down to 100kB or less I wouldn't use a floppy as the working storage. I use ScanDisk or SpinRite on any floppy that's had a bit of deleting/adding going on. In your case, I would certainly save all current work before changing diskettes. Occasionally I get files that don't update correctly after editing -- something to do with SmartDrive?

Additional info on problem. I went back to finish work on disk #1. I had five different files saved on it. I could successfully open 4 of them. But when I tried to open one of them I got the following error message in an Adobe Illustrator error box: (message not written as appeared on screen) Can't open the illustration. The illustration exceeds an implementation limit. Offending command: `exch 2 copy 0 exch put _sp eq { exch 5 index 5 index 5 index 5-1 roll widthshow } { false charpath } ifelse 2 copy rmove to } Is the first time I have seen such a message and have been using this software for ten years. rcmoon

I work in design as well. I save ALL my work to harddrive during the working day, then to 100MB Project ZIP Disks before closing down. But ONLY when I have checked files are correctly saved to disk do I delete the master copy I have been working on (Not every day, but to create more working space for future projects) A number of 'accidents' in the past has lead me to this meathod of working. Most of my files exceed 1.44MBs and I now only use ZIP disks to save work to file.