Files in external hard drive has disappeared?

Question

Some of the files in my WD external hard drive has disappeared but according to disk space those data is still there. First I thought the files were hidden but it seems it's not there when I turn on show hidden option form windows folder setting., so tried using malwarebyte and F-secure scanner to search the hard drive for virus but there's none. I also tried the regedit method to unhide the files but no luck. What could be the reason for this and how can I get those data back. Using the cmd method to find find out the folders in hardrive shows only the existing folders in the hard. Now when I select all the folders in the hard the total space is about 75gb, however when I right click on the drive it shows thats I have 364gb free of 931 which was the original space I had before those files disappeared.

Answer 1

when weird stuff like this happens, always run chkdsk to make sure your hard drive isn't failing on you. You can run a full check on your hard drive (and recover any bad clusters if there are any) by typing:



chkdsk x: /r



replace x with the drive letter of your external HDD

Answer 2

Supposing the hard drive is formatted as NTFS, there may be an issue with the security descriptors on the files, preventing them from being seen by you. Try right-clicking on a low-level folder, click "Properties", and check the Security tab. Your own account should show up here with "Full control" permission, as 'creator-owner' of the files. If not, try clicking the Advanced button, Owner tab, and take ownership of the files.



You have to be certain that your own profile is intact. If you have noticed any missing icons or programs, or errors at startup relating to your profile, you might have been logged in with a temporary profile, and thus might not have permissions to view the files saved with your real profile.



CHKDSK (as Erik suggests) can help fix security descriptor issues as well.



Another possibility is that your operating system is compromised due to infection. Are you able to see *any* hidden files? Some viruses can disable the ability to view hidden files, and hide themselves to prevent you from finding them.

Answer 3

Hi,

From your description, I think the following method could help you solve the problem:

Click “start” menu, click ”Run”, type ”cmd”, enter.

Assuming that you USB letter is “H”, then type “H:” enter.

type" attrib –h –s -r /s /d *.* ”, then enter

after attrib put a space and space every as you see (-h) is one no space but space after then (-s) is one like that..(/s) is also one and (*.*) is one hope u uderstand.

leave " " out just type attrib –h –s -r /s /d just used them to demonstrate to u.

If u do everything right it may take a while then you will see H:> again then

Re-open your USB, everything return to normal?

More information, please refer to the following page:

Attrib

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490868.aspx

Regards,

Answer 4

Sometimes, files from external hard drive have disappeared but still present on disk space. If you do not have backup of such files, then make use of Remo Recover tool to retrieve files like videos, audio, documents, etc.