Files mysteriously disappearing from external drive ???

Further to my above post, I downloaded a program called SoftPerfect File Recovery, and it found all the missing .exe files in a directory called:

System Volume Information\_restore{D25F204A-D3BA-4EF3-9D3A-4945457C2D4}\fifoed\

All the files have been renamed A0189997.exe, A0189998.exe etc.

As it appears that the missing files are still on the drive, is there any simple way to restore them to their correct locations with their correct names, rather than having to restore them to another drive and go through each file individually?

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Thanks to this thread I was able to remove the nod142 service from my computer.

Malwarebytes didn't even remove it. I had to manually remove the registry entries. I wouldn't have even know I had this service, except I had just installed Norton Utilities and it showed me it was in my start up entries.
I first kept disabling the start up entry but it would come back with a new number like nod144 service.

So I thank all for the links and info.