Files Mysteriously Disappearing From Drive
Feb 1, 2010
I have a Seagate external drive hooked up. I back all my data up to it. The other day I accessed it and to my shock ALL FILES were gone. Poof. We're talking thousands of files. Weird though, the folder structure/tree was still completely in tact!! Every folder is there, it's just the files that are gone. I used Recuva This and got about 60% of it back. The other 40% is gone forever I guess. Very sad as there were about 500 family images that we lost.
Anyway, I add more files to this drive about three days ago to test. Sure enough they TOO are gone now but their folders are still there! Ugh! Important to note these files are NOT going to the recycle bin for some reason. They are just being zapped from the drive somehow.
SOMETHING/SOMEONE is making my files disappear. This drive is NOT being shared on the network. I ran scan disk and no errors were found. I have run numerous anti virus and spyware removal software and only found some spam trojans. Nothing of the malicious variety (that I know of). I also ran SeaTools and the drive seems fine. I have another USB drive and it is also fine and files are NOT disappearing from it.
Here is my HJT log if it helps.
Has anyone ever heard of this before?
View 5 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Mar 24, 2012
A computer has a 1TB drive as the boot drive (C. It had 800GB of files on it. When the user booted recently, most of the files were deleted from the hard drive. I installed the drive in another computer, and the files show up as deleted. The computer passes malware and virus scans without issue.
I'm currently using Recuva to try to recover the available files (about 80% of the deleted files appear to be recoverable, but some critical files are not.) The recovered files are being saved to an external USB drive.
The only time I've had this problem before was corrected with chkdsk. I'm very cautious about doing anything with this drive until I have recovered all that I can manually.
It passed Spinrite with no issues. The computer is Windows 7 Home Edition 64-bit.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Jun 1, 2011
I use win7. I sometimes find that duplicates of my files and folders are being made without my knowledge. Nothing nefarious, just plain weird. I'm the only one on me puter (home, no network) and I discovered this one day by a search result showing four copies of the same files with the same creation date, but in different places.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Nov 29, 2011
i used to save my files on the local disk D then one day i found the exact copies of my files located in the libraries.. i can see the same files on PICTURES, MUSIC, DOCUMENTS folders. all are the same! i tried to delete those files then this was happened.. my original files on local disk D was also deleted. now every time i make changes on D, it also happens on the other said folders.
my hard disk is getting full because of these duplicates
View 6 Replies
View Related
Apr 15, 2011
I have a folder that that no longer shows any files in explorer. I right click on this folder, click on properties and see that there 171 MB of 59 files in this folder, yet in the explorer view it says there are none. Properties says that these files are not hidden. So how can I see and access my files?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jul 20, 2011
I have a very strange problem. I have recently experienced that MP3 files and JPEG files disappear when I edit them. I have for example rotated a JPEG image in the Windows photo viewer and changed the album name on an MP3 file in windows media player. After this I can no longer find the file in the folder. The MP3 file can still play in windows media player but in the folder where the files used to be it says "folder is empty". What is going on? I do not understand it
View 5 Replies
View Related
Sep 14, 2011
I was moving my pictures to different folders, I was dragging and dropping rather than copying and pasting, but I realized after I was done that they weren't being passed to the folders and they're also nowhere to be found.
I don't know what to do and I'd hate to think my files are lost forever.
My computer is a Dell Inspiron 15, intel core i7.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 10, 2011
this may be similar to some of the problems already mentioned but: we are editing images as we have done thousands of times before but today for some reason when we hit it he apply button the image file disappears. We can restore the file but everytime today we try to edit the properties of the file
View 5 Replies
View Related
Dec 27, 2009
I was running Windows Vista 32bit on my Dell Inspiron 1545. I then decided to install Windows 7. I installed the 64bit version. Everything seemed ok apart from my CD/ROM drive. It works now and again but will suddenly disappear. I have seen people saying clean it but I dont think this is necessary as it worked a treat on Windows Vista. I tried to burn a disc in Windows Media Player but it says "connect a burner & restart the player". I have tried deleting the filters in the regedit. I have this morning re-installed Windows 7 but instead installed the 32bit version
View 9 Replies
View Related
Oct 4, 2012
I have 3 drives in my system.Boot Drive2TB WD Black Caviar3TB Hitachi DeskstarThe 2TB will come & go. Sometimes its there, sometimes it's not. I have replaced the HD (it used to be a Hitachi), replaced cables, changed drive letter and even replaced the motherboard to no avail.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Oct 9, 2009
Ok I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 and my dvd drive keeps coming and going. The drive is a TSST TS-L633B 12.7 SATA Trayload 8X DVDRW. The pc is a dual core pentium with 3gb ram. When loading a dvd the drive will show up and then shortly disappear. Sometimes it will stay longer but if i pause a dvd it will disappear again and i have to either reboot or open and close the tray to get it to recognize again. I have removed the driver from device manager and i have tried updating the driver with the latest windows 7 drivers from dell with no luck. When i try to flash the drive with the latest the driver it will be there but when opening the flashing program is disappears again. I have even gone the route of getting a replacement drive from dell and it does the same exact thing.I have gone and tried the upperfilters and lowerfilters and that did no change either. I have checked the bios and the drive shows up in the bios.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Aug 12, 2010
I upgraded from Win XP to Windows 7 64 bit about a month ago (I did a clean install as I've always had issues with in place upgrades). My machine has four hard drives total, two internal SATA drives, and two external USB drives. For some reason my secondary internal drive, a WD 500 GB SATA drive (nothing fancy), keeps disappearing randomly while windows is running. This started about a week ago, it ran ok for the first 2 weeks or so.The drive comes back fine and dandy if I completely shut down the machine and then boot it back up. The drive stays until some random moment when Windows doesn't see it anymore. Now, if I do a simple Restart the drive doesn't show up, ONLY after I shut down completely, and push the power button back on, does this work. There is nothing in the System logs, no error messages, nothing, it just vanishes and is completely random.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Mar 22, 2011
I have a custom machine that I just recently built a few months ago. Last week, I decided to upgrade the mobo so that I could have more ram slots and a second PCI Express slot. I swapped out the mobos, booted the computer, and everything was working just fine. The only problem is that I'm running Windows 7 OEM and I've heard that you can run into problems when swapping out hardware. My computer was working for about 24 hours after installing the new mobo but at one point the other day the computer just shut itself down. I went to boot it back up and all that popped up was BIOS. I inserted my Windows disc to try and repair my system and I came to find out that my Operating System, along with everything on the Hard Drive was GONE. I have never heard of such a thing happening. So I reinstalled 7 and basically had to start over from scratch. Another day goes by and the same thing happens. This is now the second time I've had to reinstall Windows 7. My computer is running fine now but I am afraid that this is going to happen again so I'm reluctant to put anything on my hard drive until I know this issue is resolved. I contacted MS but they aren't much help as I only have the OEM version of Windows.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Nov 1, 2011
my hitachi external drive 3 tb disappears from My Computer every time I shut down the pc(windows 7).To reconnect, I have to unplug its power supply and then plug it back in.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jul 12, 2009
Not sure when or why it happens but about 5 shortcuts I have on the desktop to mapped drivesfolders will disappear. Everything else is fine. X64 7264.
Any ideas?
View 9 Replies
View Related
May 22, 2011
Problem Description: I boot up my PC, everything works fine, after an hour or so, my D (Secondary internal drive) disappears and the system has to be rebooted to find it again. Note, this happens whether or not the drive is currently being used.
Note: The drive always appears in the BIOS.
Drive: Seagate Barricuda 7200.11 750GB
Serial number: 9QK1GAKJ
Disk model: ST3750330AS
Steps I've taken to try and solve the problem: Initially I thought the drive was simply being unmounted, so i attempted to mount it again using disk management. However the drive won't appear there either, nor will it appear in system information or Seatools. A disk rescan won't reveal it either. I later, tried to use SeaTools to find out whether or not there was something physically wrong with the drive, but the drive passed all the tests. Peculiarly enough, when the D: drive disappears it also disappears in Seatools. Thirdly, I checked my power settings to make sure i hadn't had some timer for the hard drive to shut off. Fourthly, I checked the bios settings to make sure there wasn't some sort of power policy conflict there as-well. Lastly, I scanned the disk for errors with the windows (with both options to recover bad sectors and fix errors checked) and rebooted. (The problem still occurs) I will be trying to turn off the bios's plug and play settings next, and see if it will work better if i should let windows handle the device detection.
View 8 Replies
View Related
Apr 13, 2011
I am running windows 7. on my hdd i have two partitions. both work fine except when i view the space used on partition D: it shows i have used up 178 gig when windirstat only show i have used 124 gig. please can somebody help me find the other 50 or so gig
View 1 Replies
View Related
Dec 13, 2012
few folders in my external hard drive are missing. I am running a scan and hopefully it'll fix, but it takes so long to scan the hard drive as it's a 3 TB hard drive.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 12, 2012
I have a disk in drive F, but when I clicked on the eject button, the drive disappeared. As well, i can't get my disk out of the drive.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 1, 2011
The icons on my desktop suddenly were modifed with a tiny little rectangle that looks like a miniature desktop with little red, green and blue characters added to them.The recycle bin and my computer icons don't have this modification.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jul 30, 2010
i am running 2 external hard drives and a Codemeter Ignition Key. All were somehow assigned their own identification letter (example: Local Disk E:, F: and so forth upon install. I had gotten used to the drives by those letters. Yesterday they all changed for some unknown reason. I tried "start - "computer" and right clicked on each drive and clicked on "rename." I was allowed to rename a drive with its original letter, but when I exited the original was there with the freshly changed previous one beside it. Eg; "Local Disk E: F:." I even tried system restore but the problem remains.Would anyone have some suggestions as to why this has occurred and how I can correct it?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Mar 28, 2011
Using x64 Ultimate SP1 here. Just tidying up my desktop and taskbar to the way I like them. Nothing too tricky here, just minimizing clutter and placing shortcuts to Adobe CS5 apps on the task bar after upgrading from CS4 to CS5. My prior desktop was a bit more cluttered with shortcuts, and the taskbar held only CS4 shortcuts pinned to the bar. After setting everything to the way I want it, saving my desktop theme, and even rebooting a few times, the desktop configuration seems static. I also created a restore point with the new desktop and taskbar arrangement included.
But, come back the next day and it's all back to the old cluttered desktop and CS4 icons pinned to the taskbar! It doesn't seem to affect my desktop wallpaper settings, though --only the dtop icons and pinned taskbar icons. Not using any 3rd party desktop managers or the like. It always seems to happen sometime during the night. When I check to see whether a Windows update has taken place, most times there hasn't been one. This has been going on now for over a week. Sure getting tired of the system restore routine just to get back to my current desktop config.
View 3 Replies
View Related
May 22, 2010
Is there a way to make SFC use the Windows 7 DVD for files to be replaced instead of the files on the hard drive?
View 9 Replies
View Related
Dec 18, 2009
I'm really hoping I find an answer to this question besides the one I've found on the internet a hundred times over (That's not a good idea, you shouldn't do it).
My question is: Is there a way to allow a user to create/edit files in the C drive (system drive), and in the Program Files contained there? Let's assume that this user is not only a local admin, but a domain admin as well.
The reason for this is I work for a company that does a lot of editing within these areas of Windows. We need to be able to create and edit files where they are stored. I know one way around we've found is to copy the item out of the folder, edit it, and put it back, but this is a pain in the butt.
I also know that most program need to "run as admin", so that's not the problem either. I've given this user every right and permission in the Security tab of the C drive, and had it propagate down through all files, folders, and sub-folders, and still I'm hit with an error that says "Access is Denied" or another one saying that I don't have the right privileges.
Please, if anyone knows how to change this in 7 it would be much appreciated. I know that this worked in XP, and I'm not looking for someone to tell me "this is a bad idea so don't do it", or "maybe it didn't work right in XP". I have seen enough of these.
UPDATE: I have been playing around with saving office and wordpad documents into the C drive, and into the Program files. It seems that I'm able to do both now (for some odd reason), but I still receive intermittent errors when trying to edit or copy/paste or cut/paste from one location to another.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Mar 21, 2012
Recently my wife caught a virus on her computer (HP touchsmart windows 7 home premium). Your typical virus program that sends hundreds of pop up screens and says click this for full removal, blah blah blah. Anyways I used malwarebytes to see if the program could be removed, malwarebytes found 5 problems and I removed them. Afterward I noticed that there were no icons on the screen, I tried to bring up task manager and the computer rebooted. once the computer rebooted, there was a black screen with "no operating system found".
I tried the "repair your computer" option on the Windows 7 disk, but it was not able to repair the problem automatically, I also tried some manual command scan prompts that I found on the net. None of this has worked so far.
I figured that I would take the hdd out of her computer and dock it to another computer. The hard drive connected fine, but when I tried to open it there was nothing in there. I tried to make sure that all files were not hidden (they weren't). Funny thing is when I click on properties for the drive it shows that the drive is 2/3rds full but I can't see any files or information when I try to search the drive. I also just tried copying the hard drive to another harddrive and it was copying files but once I opened the new location, it was still empty (even thought the folder said in properties 84 gigs).
Is there something that I am missing, I would like to retrieve all of her documents, pictures etc. then I could reformat that drive and re-install windows if I can not get it to boot back up correctly.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Dec 20, 2011
How can I transfer my User files C:Users to F:Users and have Windows make a reference to it, meaning that it will be modified on F:Users from now on.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jul 4, 2010
My Drive C is almost filled up, so I want to transfer some of the files from Drive C to Drive D, is there a way I can do that and not changing the File location in the Documents and Music folders?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Feb 28, 2012
why are my contacts keep disappearing ?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jun 25, 2009
Has anyone experienced the syndrome of files and or complete installed programs simply disappearing after a reboot. I have had many instances of that occuring and when I reinstall the missing program, it picks up all the data that was created ( database files, confg, serial,etc) . I see lots of items in GOOGLE,<DISAPEARING FILES IN WINDOWS 7> but surprisingly , none here on Windows 7 Forum.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jul 18, 2011
I'm having trouble with my start menu retaining Pinned items. They Pin/Unpin fine but disappear after restart or shut down. I'm getting nothing to identify what the problem might be
View 5 Replies
View Related
Jan 22, 2012
Shortly after a program icon (some, but not all) is placed on my desktop, the face of it disappears and I'm left with a generic Windows icon. It still functions, but there is no face to show what it is.It appears to be a problem on my system install disk, since formatting makes no difference. In fact, I just clean formatted an hour ago and the first program I downloaded was Firefox, and the Firefox desktop icon is already missing its normal appearance.
View 1 Replies
View Related
