I purchased the WD My Passport Essential SE 1 TB external hard drive and copied over music and other files a few days ago. After copying my files (more than 15,000 MP3s, etc.) today the folders are all on the hard drive but each folder is empty. Everything is missing and icons for Word and Excel documents appear but do not open.
I am not using the supplied software; I just dragged stuff from my hard drive to the portable drive. Are there any solutions to retrieving the files? I tried unplugging the unit, but that didn’t seem to help.
So I ejected the WD drive from my computer and let it sit for a while. I then reattached is again and all of my files are back. I ejected again and did not hook up the drive to the computer the entire day. I just hooked it up again and the files are still there.
I am a bit concerned about how or why my files mysteriously disappeared. I contacted Western Digital support and they pointed me to a file recovery software. That doesn’t explain how files mysteriously disappear and appeared. I think for now I will leave it unplugged from my computer and only attach it to the computer when necessary.
