Illustrator File Damaged And Could Not Be Repaired

[b***@gmail.com]

its been coming more and more common for my files to become damaged and not be able to open for me. It started with files that had an insane number of veticies. So that was sort of undersandable. Now it just ruined 20 hours worth of layout work. The file wasnt that involved but it was exactly how the client wanted it. I have a purchased version of cs2 and mac osx 10.4. If you do not have an answer for how to repair the file can you atleast tell me how to prevent this from continuing in the future.

[e***@gmail.com]

I would recommend trying to save the file in various formats to see if you have any better luck. A few good alternate formats would be eps and pdf (located under File>Save as in Illustrator). Also, make sure that the files have the correct extention typed after their names (for example, an illustrator file would have .ai after it, a pdf file would end in .pdf, etc). It sounds pretty basic, but not having the correct extention can sometimes damage a file.I had read about it here: http://www.illustrator.restoretools.com/
There are a few resources out there that can help with repairing corrupt files- I'm listing these at the end of the email in case you want to look into this option.
You may also want to contact Adobe Technical Support to determine why your files are becoming damaged after saving them.