A friend of mine just put CS6 on his computer, about a week after the install he notices that a lot of his picture files were converted to DAT files, we can't figure out why. Can't open them at all.
What was the file type of the original image file? PSD, TIFF, DNG, etc.?
Here's something he could try...
Rename a couple of the dat files to their original extension. For example, if the original file was myimage.psd, rename myimage.dat to myimage.psd and then try to open it. If it fails, the file is corrupted and most likely unrecoverable, unless the original file was backed up.
If these were camera RAW files, and he used ACR from within CS6 to convert them, and CS6 changed them to DAT, either ACR can't read them, and/or the files were already corrupted on the camera's card.
Now, I've had a couple of large (2GB) TIFF files get corrupted (I have no idea how) and Photoshop threw an error and couldn't open them. I've never seen what you describe happen before--very odd.
--P
Posted by Paul DeCesare on June 26, 2014 at 12:58 AM
He might have a bot or a virus written specifically to rename or even corrupt photo files. DAT files are usually behind-the-scenes files the Windows and other programs will use to store binary data. A programmer could use any three-letter extension he wants, but we all use meaningful extensions for the system files we need, and a .dat file tells another programmer that there's binary data inside. ANYWAY, it's very very easy for some creep to write a script that walks the hard drive and changes the name (I could write that in one line of code actually). Point is, if someone did that to have fun, then all the malware may be doing is renaming just to make you sweat. Try Preston's suggestion, and if it works then it's just some goofball hacker having fun on a Friday night. We used to lob eggs at cars when we were kids, what on earth was a desktop computer?? Oh, BTW, if changing the extension works, definitely download MalwareBytes and/or Microsoft Security Essentials and even SuperAntiSpyware and run these. Between the three you should be able to nail it.
He might have a bot or a virus written specifically to rename or even corrupt photo files.
Thanks, Paul. I was thinking the same thing. If the files have simply had their extension changed by a malware script, that's a good thing, apart from dealing with the malware, if that's the cause. I hope Danny's friend's images aren't corrupted.
MalwareBytes, along with a good anti-virus program should find the culprit and help you clean it up.
If it's not a malware issue, I'd be real interested to see how this happened. In any event, I think this should be reported to Adobe, whether it's a bug or a security hole in CS6.
hi,
first of all, thanks for your replies. All the files that were converted were in cr2. image format. they were named by dates only, since I had not done anything with them yet. I have been able to recover them as raw images using stellar phoenix but have not been able to figure this out. I have avg virus and security essentials. I have ran a scan with malware bytes and there wasn't anything there that I could see. still stumped
Since the cr2 files were not the victim of malware, and you were able to recover them (That's good!) this points to, possibly, either a faulty install of PS, or bug in PS.
Question: Did you try to open one of the recovered cr2 files in PS? If yes, what was the result?
Question 2: Did Adobe have anything to say about this issue?
Discussion
7 repliesHas anyone heard of CS6 converting files out of the blue to DAT. files?
Thank you for your time.
I've never seen this. Which file types are being converted to DAT, which I assume is the file extension, e.g. mypicture.dat?
I convert NEF files to PSD, and TIFF scan files to PSD. Those for the Web get saved as JPEG.
We need more info. What are you doing when this happens, e.g. opening a file, saving, etc.? Are there any error messages?
--P
What was the file type of the original image file? PSD, TIFF, DNG, etc.?
Here's something he could try...
Rename a couple of the dat files to their original extension. For example, if the original file was myimage.psd, rename myimage.dat to myimage.psd and then try to open it. If it fails, the file is corrupted and most likely unrecoverable, unless the original file was backed up.
If these were camera RAW files, and he used ACR from within CS6 to convert them, and CS6 changed them to DAT, either ACR can't read them, and/or the files were already corrupted on the camera's card.
Now, I've had a couple of large (2GB) TIFF files get corrupted (I have no idea how) and Photoshop threw an error and couldn't open them. I've never seen what you describe happen before--very odd.
--P
Thanks, Paul. I was thinking the same thing. If the files have simply had their extension changed by a malware script, that's a good thing, apart from dealing with the malware, if that's the cause. I hope Danny's friend's images aren't corrupted.
MalwareBytes, along with a good anti-virus program should find the culprit and help you clean it up.
If it's not a malware issue, I'd be real interested to see how this happened. In any event, I think this should be reported to Adobe, whether it's a bug or a security hole in CS6.
--P
first of all, thanks for your replies. All the files that were converted were in cr2. image format. they were named by dates only, since I had not done anything with them yet. I have been able to recover them as raw images using stellar phoenix but have not been able to figure this out. I have avg virus and security essentials. I have ran a scan with malware bytes and there wasn't anything there that I could see. still stumped
Since the cr2 files were not the victim of malware, and you were able to recover them (That's good!) this points to, possibly, either a faulty install of PS, or bug in PS.
Question: Did you try to open one of the recovered cr2 files in PS? If yes, what was the result?
Question 2: Did Adobe have anything to say about this issue?
--P