Not all files are visible on the flash drive. What to do if files are missing from the flash drive, but the space is occupied
They are the main method of transporting data. To copy files, users connect their flash drives to dozens of various computers. It's no surprise that the developers malware Flash drives are very often used to distribute malware.
By connecting your flash drive to a computer infected with viruses, you will instantly become a victim. The virus is copied onto the flash drive, and your files are modified. In most such cases, after a flash drive is infected with a virus, the following picture is observed: no files are visible on the flash drive, it seems that the disk is completely empty. But when checking occupied space it turns out that the files take up free place on disk. Accordingly, nothing has been deleted, you just do not have access to the files. In this article we will talk about how to solve this problem.
Step No. 1. Check for antivirus.
If no files are visible on the flash drive, it means it is infected with viruses. Therefore, you should not connect it to all computers in a row, in the hope that your files will become available on one of the computers. So you just spread the virus and do good service virus writer.
You can only connect an infected flash drive to computers that are protected by an antivirus. Before connecting the flash drive, you need to make sure that the antivirus is running and running. Computers with disabled or unloaded antivirus will also become a victim of infection.
Step No. 2. Checking the flash drive for viruses.
After connecting the flash drive, the first thing you need to do is . To do this, open My Computer, click right click mouse on the flash drive and run a virus scan.
Step No. 3. Enable display of hidden files.
After the virus scan is completed, you can work with the flash drive. If there are no files visible on the flash drive, this means that they are hidden. To view hidden files, you need to enable the corresponding function.
To do this, in any window, press Alt key and open the menu “Tools - Folder Options”.
In the window that opens, go to the “View” tab. Here you need to uncheck the box next to “Hide protected system files" and check the box next to " and disks ".
Step No. 4. View hidden files on the flash drive.
After these steps, you need to open the flash drive again. Now you can . Hidden files and folders are displayed with translucent icons, making them easy to distinguish from regular files and folders.
In order to turn hidden files and folders to normal, just call up the object’s properties and uncheck the “Hidden” checkbox.
For many users computer equipment, there are cases that after copying data to a USB flash drive, when reuseThe flash drive does not see files. If we look at the volume occupied on it, we will see that the flash drive is full.
Folders are missing on the flash drive???
And so this article will discuss what to do if the flash drive doesn’t see the files? And so, if you tear off a flash drive, and there are no your files there or instead there are shortcuts with the same names as the files, then this article is just for you. This means that there is a virus on the flash drive, after removing which you need to follow the steps below.
Note: The method will be described below as in manual mode do visible files to flash drives, without loss of information. If you don’t have time or can’t do this manually, write on the forum. And we will send a body file to solve this problem.
The first step to solve the problem “Flash drive does not see files” Open the flash drive, which should have files, but there are none. Go to the Tools tab - Folder Options.
Note: if you have an installed operating system Windows system 7, you need to press the key on ALT keyboard, a panel will appear where you can select Tools – Folder Options. In Windows XP it is displayed by default.
A window will open in which you need to select the “View” tab.
In this tab, scroll the slider down, uncheck the boxes next to the items shown below. And uncheck the “Show hidden files and folders” checkbox. Click apply.
We go to the flash drive, we see the disappeared files that we copied before. But they are shown as hidden. To display them in a standard form, you need to create new folders and transfer data from hidden folders in them, and remove the hidden ones. If you have a lot of hidden folders, doing this manually will take a long time. Write on the forum and we will email you a batch file for automatic solution Problems.
Have you ever experienced a situation where you open a flash drive on your computer and it doesn’t show any files or files? If yes, then you have come to the right place. In this article we will tell you what to do in a situation where files and folders are not visible on the flash drive.
Hidden files
If there are no files or folders visible on the flash drive, then the first thing you need to do is enable the display of hidden files in Explorer. To do this you need to go to "Control Panel" Then go to the section " Design and personalization».
In chapter " Design and personalization"go to the subsection" Show hidden files and folders».
The dialog box “ Folders settings» with many additional parameters, which can be disabled or enabled by checking the box next to them. To make hidden files visible on your flash drive, you need to uncheck the options that are shown in the image below.
Then click the “Apply” button. Close this dialog box and return to your flash drive. You should now see hidden files or folders.
Now let's make them visible on any computer into which you connect your flash drive. To do this, right-click on the file or folder and in the window that opens context menu select " Properties" In the dialog box that opens, at the very bottom, you will see the section “ Attributes " Uncheck the attribute " Hidden».
Checking for errors
If files and folders are still not visible on the flash drive, then you need to check for errors on it. This can be done using special utilities or programs, but today we will look at the simplest method, which is provided by the Windows system.
So, to check the flash drive for errors, you need to open “ My computer"and find the shortcut to your USB flash drive. Then right-click on it and select “ Properties».
In the removable drive properties dialog box that opens, go to the " Service».
In this tab you will see two sections:
- Checking for errors;
- Disk optimization and defragmentation.
Click on the button Check" in the first section.
After checking the flash drive, it file system will be restored. Among other folders on your removable storage a folder may appear FOUND.000" It may contain files in which recovery after scanning is encrypted. To open them you need to use special utilities, For example " CHKParser32».
Antivirus
Probably the most best tool, which can solve your problem when, when you open a flash drive, files and folders are not displayed on it.
Usually, by default, it is installed in all automatic check check for viruses on all devices that are connected to USB. But if this does not happen, we recommend that you manually check your removable drive.
The most common virus on USB flash drives is “ RECYCLER" He specializes in automatic change attributes of files that are located on removable media. You can cure it using an antivirus program or full formatting flash drives.
Now you know what to do when files or folders are not visible on the flash drive. There is nothing wrong with this and this problem can be solved in a matter of minutes using our instructions.
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When working with USB media Situations often arise when some files (or even all information on the media) become invisible.
This problem may be rooted in big number reasons.
Common reasons for file “invisibility”
- The files on the flash drive are not visible, what to do in this situation? Operating systems allow you to limit the visibility of files.
In this case, such information does not disappear from the media, but the user cannot see it.
The reason for this could be a malfunction of the application, the deliberate actions of another user using this media, or the result of a virus that hides files on the drive. We will describe below ways to recover hidden files on your flash drive. - The files were written to the media with an error. This situation can occur when the flash drive is unsafely removed from the computer. In this case, some files may not be completely recorded. In this case, such a security threat will either be read incorrectly or not be displayed at all.
- The files were deleted by the user, antivirus program or as a result of a failure. We will describe methods for recovering information below.
What to do?
What to do if there are no files visible on the flash drive? Firstly, if the files on your flash drive have become hidden, you need to determine the reasons for the invisibility.
Only the correct definition allows you to choose correct option actions and open these hidden files on the flash drive.
Secondly, It’s worth trying to open the flash drive on another computer or through another operating system. Some reading errors can be corrected more new version Windows.
Ways to show hidden files
To solve this problem you can use: standard means yours operating system, and using various third-party programs.
Instructions for Windows XP
Instructions for the Total Commander program
Showing hidden files on your flash drive will also help Total Commander. To do this you need:
- Open the folder in the program.
- On the toolbar, find the icon in the form of a sheet with exclamation point(in some versions of the program - an asterisk) with the inscription “ Hidden elements».
When activated, all hidden files will appear semi-transparent.
Information from the media disappeared after being scanned by an antivirus program
This situation may occur if the files contain potentially dangerous information. In this case, most antivirus programs will place the file in a quarantine zone for further processing.
To restore them, you need to find “Quarantined files” in the antivirus menu and restore (or delete infected) files in the menu that appears. After this, the information will appear on the media.
It is worth saying that if the information is recognized as malicious, then the antivirus can offline mode delete it from the media without the possibility of subsequent recovery.
In this case, the list of antivirus operations performed will contain information about the infected file and the reasons for deletion.
Problems accessing the flash drive
More common problem What is more important than the visibility of the file is the denial of access to the flash drive. This manifests itself as follows.
You insert the flash drive into the slot, try to open it and receive the message “Access denied”. There are two main reasons for this problem.
Firstly, the media fails. In this case, it is almost impossible to restore the functionality of your device on your own and you will need to contact service centers.
Secondly, a write error may occur on the media due to unsafe ejection and interruption of the writing process.
In this case, to restore full access It is necessary to check the media for errors. For this:
- Open the My Computer window and find your removable media. If it is not in this window, then most likely the flash drive has failed.
- Right-click on the flash drive shortcut and select “Properties” - “Tools” - “Check volume for errors” from the menu. This check is highly likely to solve problems. If this does not happen, then a breakdown is likely.
