Have Your Files Disappeared From Your Hard Drive?

By Luqmaan

You might have noticed files on your hard drive mysteriously ‘disappearing’, as in you can’t find your files but the disk space that the file requires is still unavailable, if this is the case go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief as your files are not lost after all. This occurs due to a virus infection as well, a relatively low risk threat as it can be easily fixed. There are a number of ways to get around this problem and gain access to your files again.

Using My Computer

- Go to Tools > Folder Options (If you can’t find folder options read our post on how to fix folder options)

- Go to the ‘View’ tab and select ’show hidden files and folders’ and uncheck ‘hide protected operating system files’. Apply the changes.

Once you perform this function you should be able to access the files which apparently vanished. If it still doesn’t appear, go to Folder Options again and check if the changes were applied, if they’ve been reverted to their previous settings, it looks like you are still infected and the virus is preventing you from saving your preferences and gaining access to your files. In this case it is highly recommended you use a good antivirus program like Kaspersky and fix this issue as well as other issues your computer may have.

Using Disk Heal

Disk Heal has a handy feature which lets you unhide your ‘disappeared’ files by typing in the path of your hidden files, the catch is you would need to know the exact full path of the file or folder to fix this issue.

- Go to the ‘fix’ tab in Disk Heal and type in the path of the hidden file or folder and click ‘restore’: