Solved Pendrive folders are inaccessible/not showing

[WalkD]

Hi, this is very weird, an I've never seen this before.. but today I was working on a .psd file that was in my pendrive. I finished working on it, saved the changes, and took the pendrive to school. But when I opened the pendrive at school, 2 folders were missing (one being the one the .psd file was in).

The pendrive is not corrupted though.. ..running Recuva doesn't even shows traces of this folder's contents, what is very weird ...(it's like Recuva thinks the folders were never erased at all, or like they never existed..).

I've tried this unhide command:

Click "Start" Menu > "Run" > type "cmd" > type "attrib -h -r -s /s /d h:\*.* "

and all it did was show the "System Volume Information" foder..

But then I verified the Pendrive's used space, and compared with the size of the files shown inside of it:

so it seems the hidden folders are still there...somewhere ..I just need to enable them somehow. Hope someone here has an idea for helping me with it. Thank you

 

[Megahertz07]

It may be hidden.
Open Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Folder Options
On View tab
- Hidden files and folders - Show Hidden files and folders

On Explorer, right click on the column (Name, Date, Type, etc) and choose to show Attributes

As I have seen this happening due to virus, scan your drives with an antivirus.

 

[jumanji]

What Megahertz07 said above is a conventional solution. If that does not work:

Is it a virus affliction? If so why only two folders got hidden? I have no answer. I don't even know what is .psd file. Well, I see that it Adobe photoshop file ( learnt )

Leaving aside the research on the file format and whether it is due to a virus infliction, try this.

Download and install your Windows bit version of WinRAR.

Run WinRAR and navigate to your pendrive in it. It should show all your folders and files in the pendrive. That includes even superhidden folders/files that wouldn't show anywhere else. If those folders really do exist on your pendrive, those will definitely show up in WinRAR.

Open the folder and you should see the files in it. Open the .psd file and then save it to a different location. Check whether you can open the file saved in the different location. Once you have saved all the files in those two folders to a different location and convinced everything is beautiful, go to WinRAR again, right click on those two folders and in the Menu > Delete files.

Let me know whether this worked. For now it is only my thought process .

Of course, you have to run a virus check later to make sure you have no virus.

 

[TechnoMage2016]

Look in your computer, (search) to see if maybe that file/folder got saved somewhere other than the Pendrive.

Stuff happens! And over the past 37 years, I can't tell you how many times I thought I'd saved a file to one location and later found out that it went somewhere else. Arggg!

Sometimes it may seem like the computer has a mind of its own, and does what IT wants and not what you want.

just a thought

TechnoMage

 

[WalkD]

Thank you all for the replies

It may be hidden.
Open Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Folder Options
On View tab
- Hidden files and folders - Show Hidden files and folders

On Explorer, right click on the column (Name, Date, Type, etc) and choose to show Attributes

As I have seen this happening due to virus, scan your drives with an antivirus.

Did that, but had no luck. Only the previous displayed files were shown. I checked for virus and spyware, and nothing was infecting the pc.

Run WinRAR and navigate to your pendrive in it. It should show all your folders and files in the pendrive. That includes even superhidden folders/files that wouldn't show anywhere else. If those folders really do exist on your pendrive, those will definitely show up in WinRAR.
Let me know whether this worked. For now it is only my thought process

Tried that with no luck again. Winrar doesn't shows any new file or folder

Look in your computer, (search) to see if maybe that file/folder got saved somewhere other than the Pendrive.

Stuff happens! And over the past 37 years, I can't tell you how many times I thought I'd saved a file to one location and later found out that it went somewhere else. Arggg!

Good thought. I thought about that the moment I was back home actually. I searched everywhere with Everything (a search software that I recommend), but didn't had any luck finding the files or folders.. quite weird indeed.

Now after your replies, I'm thinking more strongly that, in this case, the sector of the pendrive (usb flash drive) got deeply frozen somehow. Like this specific chuck of the flash drive died or something.. ..maybe it's not a digital problem, but a physical malfunction?

 

[Megahertz07]

I recently bought a USB flash drive that was defective.
My suggestion is that you format your drive and then test it with H2testw.
It will write and read till the drive is full.
H2testw Download

 

[WalkD]

I recently bought a USB flash drive that was defective.
My suggestion is that you format your drive and then test it with H2testw.
It will write and read till the drive is full.
H2testw Download

Yup, I think that's what is left to do now.
The situation was different to me cause the flash drive didn't show any obvious sign of defect or corruption..

Thank you, I'll download H2testw and do that.

 

[Megahertz07]

There are many fake drives around the corner. I once had a 64G Pendrive. On Explorer it showed as 64G but was in fact 4G.

 

[jumanji]

When WinRAR does not show your two folders , it is absolutely certain that those folders do not exist. Folders getting lost surely is a pointer to a fake drive.

If it is a genuine drive ( I shall still give you the benefit of doubt) , go to the manufacturer's website and check whether there is any recovery software offered in Support and try that.

( You must always give full details of your pendrive, - manufacturer, Model, Capacity, whether it is a real branded pen drive or purchased cheaply from a footpath vendor, for how long you have been using etc., or else you are only taking us for a ride )

 

[WalkD]

When WinRAR does not show your two folders , it is absolutely certain that those folders do not exist. Folders getting lost surely is a pointer to a fake drive.

If it is a genuine drive ( I shall still give you the benefit of doubt) , go to the manufacturer's website and check whether there is any recovery software offered in Support and try that.

( You must always give full details of your pendrive, - manufacturer, Model, Capacity, whether it is a real branded pen drive or purchased cheaply from a footpath vendor, for how long you have been using etc., or else you are only taking us for a ride )

Sorry, it's a Markvision USB2 16GB RB2.MV original USB drive. By what I saw from your responses, the issue may have come from it's age, since it's a reasonably old usb drive (around 6 years old I think). I'm considering this issue as a signal that it's time to retire this drive (even though it's working apparently normally, but without the 2 missing folders and some GBs).

 

[jumanji]

That your flash drive is such an old device puts everything in proper perspective.The memory technology and controllers used in the first generation flash drives is not the same as that used today. As with everything, technology has evolved over a period time and soon we forget the past.

The first generation flash drives may not have the same "wear levelling" process that is present in the present day drives. So it is quite possible that certain memory has "worn" more than the rest becoming unreadable ( readability below threshold level). That cannot happen in the present day flash drives. Once the drive controller detects something is amiss, it shuts down the whole drive making it unusable for further data storage. ( If you say folders lost, we can only think of fake drives where it happens today )

So your conjecture that certain portions of the drive could have gone bad may be right. Linux in many cases can read what Windows cannot read. So you may still try to recover that "lost data" with a live Linux.

My post #8 here on creating a Live Linux flash drive : Is there any way of saving a completely unrecognisable hard drive? It will also take you to Lucid Puppy way to recover files from a non-bootable computer. In your case it is your unreadable (in parts) flash drive.

 

[WalkD]

I see, interesting. That seems to explain everything. Time to retire this drive then
Maybe I'll try looking for lost data with Linux as you said on the weekend, but at least I found part of the files from the lost folders in my "usb Backups" that I did some weeks ago in my external HDD. It's not the best solution, but it's good enough for such unpredictable events.
Thank you jumanji and all you guys for the help