Files Not Showing in External Hard Drive? 8 Ways to Fix

Quick Answer

If files are not showing in an external hard drive, first check whether they are hidden and make sure the drive is recognized by Windows.

If the drive still shows used space but the files are missing, recover important data before running repair commands. You can then use File Explorer, Command Prompt, Windows Error Checking, or other troubleshooting methods to make the files visible again.

Files Not Showing in External Hard Drive: What Does It Mean

When an external hard drive can be opened but files or folders are not visible, the drive may still indicate that storage space is in use. This generally suggests that the data remains on the device and has not been permanently deleted.

The missing files may be hidden, rendered inaccessible, or affected by file system errors. Therefore, the absence of visible files does not necessarily indicate data loss.

If the data is important, it is advisable to avoid writing new data to the drive. The missing files can first be recovered using MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

Recover Data from External Hard Drive

If files are missing from your external hard drive, especially when the drive still shows used space, recover important data before attempting any repair. Avoid copying new files to the drive or formatting it, as new writes may overwrite recoverable data.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery can scan recognized external hard drives for existing, lost, and deleted files, helping you determine whether the missing data is still recoverable.

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Please read Recover Files From Dead External Hard Drive With Actionable Way carefully if your external hard drive becomes dead/corrupted unluckily.

3 Steps to Recover Data from External Hard Drive

Step 1: Get this software on your computer. After successfully installation, you need to connect the external hard drive to your computer and then launch the software. Ensure that the external hard drive is recognized by your computer.

Choose the target partition where the lost files are stored on your external hard drive and click Scan. Alternatively, you can choose the specific folder to scan by clicking Select Folder at the bottom section and navigating to select the target folder.

Step 2: The scan process might take a few minutes. You can browse the file list during scanning but do not interrupt the scan process in order to find all lost files.

Generally, files are divided into three folders according to their paths: Deleted Files, Lost Files, and Existing Files. You can expand the former two folders to find the wanted files or use the Type, Filter, and Search features to locate files more quickly.

Step 3: After finding files, you can double-click to preview them. This software supports previewing documents, pictures, videos, audio, and other files less than 2GB.

Select the wanted files and click Save to choose a destination different from the original path.

Remember that MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free can only retrieve 1GB of files for free. If you choose files larger than 1GB, you should update to a premium edition to complete the data recovery process.

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After successfully recovering data from the external hard drive, you can keep reading to fix the current drive with the following methods.

Why Can’t See Files in External Hard Drive & How to Solve

Files missing from external hard drive has become a frequently discussed issue in many forums. So there must be some ideas that catch the point. Based on this, we decided to make a list of the possible reasons and useful suggestions for users to refer to. Here, we have summarized 4 main causes as well as the solutions for you.

4 Causes That Can Be Fixed Directly in Windows

Possible cause 1 – the files are hidden: sometimes, the files are not really missing from the external hard drive. They’re just hidden, not showing to us. And here are 4 solutions to unhide them.

>>1. Run Command Prompt as administrator. Input DIR/A X:-s (X refers to the drive letter of our external hard drive) and hit Enter. The meaning of this command is to list the non-system files in X: drive.

If this command returns nothing, it means our folder has been marked as protected system files, and then we can refer to the second solution.

>>2. Check whether the files are endowed with system property. Open the Control Panel and select Appearance and Personalization > File Explorer Options. Change to the View tab in the prompt window, then you should tick Show hidden files, folders, and drives and unselect Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) to show all the files. Click Apply > OK to save the changes.

>>3. If our files keep missing from the external hard d drive, run Command Prompt as administrator. Then, enter this command: attrib -h -r -s /s /d X:*.* (replace X with the actual drive letter of your external hard drive) and hit Enter to execute it. Finally, check if our real files will be shown.

>>4. If all solutions above fail, try the following process which is the most complex:

1. Run Command Prompt as administrator.
2. Type the drive letter of the external hard drive.
3. Type dir /ah and hit Enter. We will now see the files/folders with hidden attributes.
4. Type attrib [name of file/folder] -r -a -s -h and hit Enter. Please note that the file name should include the file extension, such as sample2.nrw. If the folder name has more than 6 characters, type the first 6 characters followed by ~1, such as birthd~1.

Finally, check our external hard drives, all data should be there.

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Possible cause 2 – file system errors: in some cases, the files may be not showing in an external hard drive because the file system is corrupted or because it doesn’t contain a recognized file system. At this time, users had better recover data from external hard drive with the above guide first.

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Afterward, use the Error-checking utility to detect the file system error: right-click on the partition and choose Properties. Change to the Tools tab and click Check in the Error-checking section.

Possible cause 3 – “CheckedValue” is suffering from virus infection.

Here’s how to fix it:

Step 1: Open Windows Registry Editor on your computer and navigate with the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWAL.

Step 2: Locate the CheckedValue registry on the right pane. Double-click on it to check whether the data value of it is 1. If not, change the number to 1 and click OK to save the change.

Possible cause 4 – the mirror image in memory is damaged: sometimes the mirror image in memory is damaged and the operating system does not respond to a timely refresh, which happens by chance.

In this case, you can restart the computer and then reconnect the external hard drive to check if the real files are shown.

That’s all for the solutions. In fact, each solution has helped many users get rid of the files not showing in external hard drive problem, and we also hope they are helpful for you.

2 Cases for Missing Files from External Hard Drive

But what’s the real story? How exactly did they disappear? Such kinds of questions are all over the internet. The following mentioned examples are just a drop in the bucket.

"I have a problem with my external hard disk. I saved some school documents on my drive. When I got to the school computer to copy my homework, then I noticed all my folders went missing, except ones that were not in a folder. I still have my used memory, but can't see my folders. Please help me!" MakeUseOf

"Hey guys I have a problem with my external hard drive ... 2 days ago I bought a new laptop and when I plugged my hard drive into it to install some games I found that it didn't contain anything except 2 files. Also, it shows 900 GB of used space and this means that my old files are still there. So please help me return them back because I need them. By the way, I've tried showing hidden folders and everything in folder options."Tomshardware

Faced with such confusion, most users behave like ants on hot bricks, while some users skillfully find that if they try to type the path or address of a specific folder, it opens. However, typically we have stored large numbers of files and folders in the external hard drive and we cannot remember all names of folders…So any better idea?

At this time, you are suggested to adopt MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free Edition to finish data recovery by using methods introduced in If This Can’t Help You with Free USB Data Recovery, Nothing Will.

Files Not Showing in External Hard Drive FAQ

Bottom Line

When files are not showing in an external hard drive, they are not necessarily lost. The files may be hidden, affected by file system errors, or temporarily inaccessible in Windows.

First, stop using the drive and recover important data. Then try showing hidden files, removing file attributes, checking the file system, or reconnecting the drive.

If the files remain missing, use reliable data recovery software to scan the external hard drive before considering formatting or other destructive operations. For issues about MiniTool software, please feel free to contact us via [email protected].