Have Your Files Disappeared From Your Hard Drive?

By Luke

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’:

Hope the above methods would help to revert your files to the previous state, if you run into any trouble leave a comment below.

People who read this post also read:

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How to Remove Duplicate Files

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Top 10 Signs, You Have Viruses or Spyware

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About The Author

Luke is a Software Developer and the main writer behind Computer Realm.

10 Comments so far

Lauren May 25, 2011 7:52 am

Thank you. So much. I thought all of my files were gone.

I’m so happy, I’m crying.

Is there a post on this site that can show me how to fix my background. the Change Desktop background screen doesn’t work when I click okay…

Reply
Keoki May 26, 2011 4:45 am

THANK YOU!

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Shao June 6, 2011 11:04 am

Thank you so much for the help your advice worked instantly.

Only a couple of minor issues now:

1. The colors of the icons on the files look lighter(they are harder to see) How do I make them normal again?

2. Also my desktop wallpaper is still not restored. How do I fix that?

Reply
April June 11, 2011 11:46 am

Hi,
I went through the steps as described above and found that the “show hidden files” box was already checked. It seems like my music files have disappeared forever…
My computer is regularly scanned with Norton Antivirus, so I don’t understand why my music albums on my external hard drive are disappearing. Help!

Reply
  Luke reply on June 27th, 2011 12:55 pm:
Hi April,

Thanks for the comment. Did you uncheck “hide protected operating system files” as well?

Luke

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  April reply on July 5th, 2011 4:27 pm:
Hi, thanks for the reply. I’ve done that too so now I’m really out of ideas…I’ve scanned the hard drive again and no virus was spotted. I think I’ve lost around 16 albums now

Reply
  Luke reply on July 5th, 2011 10:28 pm:
Is the space occupied when you check the properties of the hard drive? Or is the space that these albums occupy available? If it is available, your albums are mostly likely deleted.

Reply
  Dan reply on August 8th, 2011 10:48 am:
The space is still occupied… no virus or malware found (Microsoft Security, MB-AM, Spybot) still no folders… I cannot access maybe 18GB of music

Reply
vessie June 29, 2011 7:21 pm

THANK YOU SOOO MUCH !! I want to celebrate all my files have been recovered. just one tiny problem that the other person mentioned that the colour of the icons are lighter but im more than happy with this !!!!!

Reply
Elina August 4, 2011 1:22 pm

Good morning,

First, thank you very much for sharing this information with us. While i was copying files into another folder they spontaniously seemed to disappear, but nothing is less true!

What i would like to ask you is how to get rid of this virus. I have McAfee Total protection, and it doesnt find any suspicious files or virusses during the virus and spyware scan. This virus is still active as my files still ”disappear” when i copy them.

I hope that you can help me.

Best regards,

Elina

Reply