Need help recovering a file

I had been working on a picture and was about to be finished with it when there was a power outage. Then, when i turned on my computer and tried to open the file again, it just shows as a 1 layered black canvas.also the preferences still show a screenshot and its still 11mb. does anyone know why this happened? I had saved the file contanstantly with the last save being about 5 minutes earlier.
I just wouldnt like to lose the file that i had been working about 6 hours on. Thnx in advance

this has happend to me also back when i first started doing such things.

more than likely its lost..............you may not be able to repare it.

the best thing to do is always save at least two copies .....say one on computer and one on CDRW etc. plus and this is a big plus get a UPS with AVR (automatic voltage reg. on it) it has saved my can so so may times where i live. rather spend $200 than loose all my hair LOL (from pulling it out)

how big is the file? and if you like you can send me a copy and i will see what i can do ..............but thoughts are the extra layers are just smoked.

Its lost. Anything can happen to a file if its on when the power goes out. I think you just suffered one of those terrors that all of us face with photoshop.

I do find it odd that if you saved 5 minutes before the power went out that the image is just a black one layered canvas, but that may be because that was what it looked like at the exact moment you saved, and perhaps you were relying just a tad too much on the history states to bring your picture back to normal. I don't know really. As I said, anything can happen to a file if the power goes out.

If I were you, I would buy a UPS power supply. Cheap ones range in price from $50-$100. I would never run Photoshop without having a UPS to save my butt these days. Battery backup is a great thing to have if you cherish the time you spend working on a computer.

If you don't want to buy a UPS, I suggest you make a duplicate of your image, after saving it, then close the original as it seems that it affects only the images you have open?

I might even advice you to save the file in a different name every time you save (like work01.psd, work02.psd and so on..)

ok, thnx for all the help, i will buy a Ups so this doesnt happen again

There might be a possibility that the color palette data was corrupted or missplaced, because when you ever wanted to change the loading screens on Winblows (I mean Windows), you can open up this file with a program to extract it, but when you open it in photoshop it's black, but the preview shows the real picture. What you needed to do to view it was to get the real color palette and load it up. I'm not sure if this helps but it might be something to consider. :p

I think this may be the solution because i can see the preview and its still it original size.
Can you tell me how to do it please?