Folder created on one machine became invisible on another machine

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

I had a folder created on one machine which crash. Plug in My Book on my another machine, it was not there any more. I could save more stuff from the new machine but what I had from the broken machine was not found.  I could set security to everbody to MyBook as an external drive but the old folder was not visible.  When I set security, I saw it also set to the old folder but it still has access blocked.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Kam

2

Was this old folder created with backup software like Smartware?

Joe

3

According to my daughter, she “moved” files/folders to MyBook on XP Windows, which crashed now and

I connect it to a Vista. Could not see any those stuffs. New stuffs that I made from Vista showed up just fine.

4

Check out post 5 there are some links for data recovery software http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Passport-for-PC/Western-Digital-External-Hard-Drive-my-files-lost/td-p/243020  Some are free and others are try and buy. That is you can recover a small amount and see if it works for you before buying.

Joe

5

It turned out  those disappeared folders/files were saved with file attributes “Read Only” & Hidden

and the current system has Folder options “Do not show hidden files and folders” ON.

To resolved the problems:

  1. Use Windows Explorer’s menu Tools/Folder options/View to turn ON  “Show hidden files & folders”,

    so that you can view them now.

  1. For each of those folders or files  right click the Properties menu and removed the file attributes “Read Only” & Hidden,

    click Apply for subfolders and OK to save.

  1. If you want to turn back on the original folder option,

     Use Windows Explorer’s menu Tools/Folder options/View to turn ON “Do not show hidden files and folders”