Korean Job Discussion Forums

[cmr]

HELP!

I have a lot of movies in a folder on my portable USB drive. My problem is that "for some reason" I can't see the files anymore. When I highlight or click on the folder, I get a "Folder empty" message; although, when I right click to get the properties of the folder I still get the 102GB that's supposed to be in it. This is all on my laptop with Vista. Now, I thought I should try with XP on my desktop and it turns out that XP can see part of the files I'm supposed to have, but it does not see them all.

So, does anyone know of a good recovery program that I could use or is there is something I should check first?

[ed]

does your laptop have only one usb plug?

turn off your portable drive and leave it off for a bit then plug it into a different plug and turn it on.

if still nogo then do you know torrent?

search torrent websites for "recover my files"

it's a good program that will recover everything if you configure it right.

[cmr]

My laptop has 4 USB plugs, two on each side, but it didn't make any difference.

I could see some of my files when I checked through the command prompt, though, just the same as when I used my drive with my desktop and XP, so I'll try my luck with the recovery software you suggested.

Thanks for the tip.

[orosee]

I also have a portable USB hard disk which occasionally causes trouble perhaps similar to yours.

The thing is that it works best with the manufacturer supplied USB cable. If I use any other cable, the drive connects but I can only see the top level folders. If I try to open any folder, they will be empty.

The problem is solved again by either using the very short mfg original cable, or connecting a second USB cable which will supply extra power to the drive.

Differences between XP and Vista may for example appear if both OS have different USB power management schemes.

In any case I hope you get your files back because losing 120GB is inconvenient to say the least. I also found that most recovery software I have used so far sucks - I end up too often with tens of thousands of files with or without proper name and/or extension.

I only did this once when I almost lost over 400 GB of movies thanks to a lost partition table.

Good luck.

[hanguker]

I use a program called Windirstat to delete hidden recycle bin files on my HDD. It might work for your USB. Here's the link:

http://windirstat.info/

Run the program. Analyze your USB disk. Find the folder that's bugging you. Right click it and delete. Works for me when nothing else does.

Good luck and let me know if it works.

[Temporary]

run->cmd->chkdsk driveletter: /f

is a good place to start.

[cmr]

Beats me what happened... but everything is back!

Maybe it has something to do with the second cable orosee talked about.

Actually, I never plugged the second cable until after I had the trouble. It didn't change anything about it last night, but it all seems to be working fine today... I'll keep my finger crossed and start buring a few DVDs.

[orosee]

Glad to hear that you have your files back. Don't you love that rush of hot and cold that you get when you realise that something is definitely wrong with your computer equipment? And that feeling when suddenly you are being given a second chance?

If it was a power supply issue, I found that this can be an issue with certain external drives that don't have independent power supply via wall socket/transformer. Especially if you are using a notebook, where power management is critical and depending on setup even applies when connected to power. Then there's that 1 V that is missing for the drive to do anything more than read the file table and show you the folder structure.

In my own case apparently the missing voltage comes when I use a longer USB cable. I can use 2 long ones (the 2nd one supplying extra power) without problems, but I lose one more USB port.

Also I found that sometimes I need to reconnect the drive to another USB port when using one cable only. Maybe some ports get more power than others.

Anyway I think that you are celebrating not having to recover 120GB of data. The job I had to do on my 450GB drive took over 24 hours for a partition revocery (but at least all the filenames were there).

[moosehead]