Windows search finds files, but when I open, they are not there!

Hi,

I have an older 2.5" Sata HDD that I put into an enclosure.

I am a writer, and I have many story files in .doc and .odt format.

Last night, I hooked the hard drive to my newer Acer laptop, and did a search for *.odt and *.doc.

Many files came up, and they even had previews for the stories, listing some text in the results.

However, when I went to copy them, and paste them, I got the error that none of the files exist!

So I manually went to the folder they were in, (C:/users/John) and the folder /John wasn't there! I have it set to show me hidden files...

When I right click the search results, they say 0 bytes, like the file is not there, yet, clearly there's a preview for the story (The first paragraph) listed under the file name in the search results!

I ran a scandisk on it, and now the search results don't show *any* files, .doc or .odt.

Please help!

For testing, try FileSearchEX (free trial) and see what it reports. It uses a true disk scan. Let's see if those files are really there or just left over from an old index.

pcunite said:

For testing, try FileSearchEX (free trial) and see what it reports. It uses a true disk scan. Let's see if those files are really there or just left over from an old index.

Thank you, I downloaded it, and searched for both, but they do not find the folder /John, which had the majority of them (It found some, though, in other places).

The folder Users/John has disappeared I downloaded Recuva and did a deep scan, and it's gone, the scan doesn't find any .doc or .odt files

tundrawolf said:

Thank you, I downloaded it, and searched for both, but they do not find the folder /John, which had the majority of them (It found some, though, in other places).

Thank you, just wanted to confirm. They are not really there then.

pcunite said:

tundrawolf said:

Thank you, I downloaded it, and searched for both, but they do not find the folder /John, which had the majority of them (It found some, though, in other places).

Thank you, just wanted to confirm. They are not really there then.

So, then, why did search find them, and even include text that was inside them under the file names? I really, really stumped over this!

If you put the drive in an external enclosure and hooked it up to your laptop the files wouldn't be in the c:/users/john, they would be in the newdriveletter:/users/john, where newdriveletter is whatever drive letter windows assigned to your external drive.

Right, true.

I figured it out last night, since I have several drives in similar looking enclosures, i believe the search function was using the indexes from "Other" "F" drives and showing them for the wrong drive when I plugged it in (Since it assigns every external drive, "F"). I plugged in another HDD and /users/John was back. Thanks for the help!