Missing Files in my external hard drive. How to get back??

[Samer]

Hi!

It has been quite sometime since last I posted here. Straight to the point, I have an external hard drive(500 GB) of which there are lots of missing files and folder which are very important for me.

Now, I can only see about 10 files when it should be hundreds of files and folders. However, when I did scanning, all the files and folders are detected by the Avira but when I tried again after the scanning completed, I still don't have access to my files and folders.

Please help.

Thanks in advance.

[BigGuy]

Hi!

It has been quite sometime since last I posted here. Straight to the point, I have an external hard drive(500 GB) of which there are lots of missing files and folder which are very important for me.

Now, I can only see about 10 files when it should be hundreds of files and folders. However, when I did scanning, all the files and folders are detected by the Avira but when I tried again after the scanning completed, I still don't have access to my files and folders.

Please help.

Thanks in advance.

You could try a free recovery software like Recuva Portable to see if it will recover your files.
http://www.piriform.com/recuva

[hal9000]

This may sound ridiculous, but are these files simply hidden? I know a guy where most of his files went missing on his portable hdd and they had somehow just hidden themselves, 20+ Gigs worth! He was quite relieved when I showed him how to view hidden files in Windows and they showed up again.

Open an Explorer window, go to the 'tools' menu >> 'folder options' >> 'view' tab.
Select 'Show hidden files and folders', and apply.

If they still aren't there or the option was on anyway, then there may be a problem with the drive and a Checkdisk /f might be needed.

[Samer]

You could try a free recovery software like Recuva Portable to see if it will recover your files.
http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Just finished trying this software but I still can't get my data.

---------- Post added at 09:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:47 AM ----------

This may sound ridiculous, but are these files simply hidden? I know a guy where most of his files went missing on his portable hdd and they had somehow just hidden themselves, 20+ Gigs worth! He was quite relieved when I showed him how to view hidden files in Windows and they showed up again.

Open an Explorer window, go to the 'tools' menu >> 'folder options' >> 'view' tab.
Select 'Show hidden files and folders', and apply.

If they still aren't there or the option was on anyway, then there may be a problem with the drive and a Checkdisk /f might be needed.

I have done that and still the same. Now, I am going to try Checkdisk..

[BigGuy]

You could also try Crystal Disk Info to check out the health of your external drive.

http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html