# Bizarre external hard drive issue



## Pukka312 (Feb 22, 2013)

Ok, so my external hard drive recently stopped allowing me to open my folders. I can see my folders, but there is a small blue arrow on each folder (like when you've copied a folder) but I can't open the folders. I freaked out of course, because I have no idea how to access my photos...but what is weird is that I hooked up my husband's external hard drive the same day and his responded the same way. All his folders had the little blue arrow and wouldn't open. Anyone have a similar issue in the past? Is there a simple way to resolve it?
P.S. tried iron an alternate computer as well and still wouldn't open


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## Pukka312 (Feb 22, 2013)

Ok, the P.S. is supposed to say tried "it on" - not iron


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## Light Guru (Feb 22, 2013)

Pukka312 said:


> Ok, so my external hard drive recently stopped allowing me to open my folders. I can see my folders, but there is a small blue arrow on each folder (like when you've copied a folder) but I can't open the folders. I freaked out of course, because I have no idea how to access my photos...but what is weird is that I hooked up my husband's external hard drive the same day and his responded the same way. All his folders had the little blue arrow and wouldn't open. Anyone have a similar issue in the past? Is there a simple way to resolve it?
> P.S. tried iron an alternate computer as well and still wouldn't open



Mac or Windows computer?


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## Pukka312 (Feb 22, 2013)

Light Guru said:


> Pukka312 said:
> 
> 
> > Ok, so my external hard drive recently stopped allowing me to open my folders. I can see my folders, but there is a small blue arrow on each folder (like when you've copied a folder) but I can't open the folders. I freaked out of course, because I have no idea how to access my photos...but what is weird is that I hooked up my husband's external hard drive the same day and his responded the same way. All his folders had the little blue arrow and wouldn't open. Anyone have a similar issue in the past? Is there a simple way to resolve it?
> ...



Windows... My iMac died on me 5 months ago (*tear)


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## Pukka312 (Feb 22, 2013)

And I use the external hard drive on a weekly basis...it had worked fine 2 days prior to its failure. 

It may be important to mention I was not using the software program it came with because on a previous laptop, it would not let me select which files and folders to back-up, (it was all or nothing) therefore I was advised by the manufacturer of the external hard drive to use it in the same respect that I would use a USB...so for a year I have simply been copying folders to the drive under 'my computer'. When I was unable to open the folders last week, I tried installing the software to see if I could pull the data that way. The retrieval program still functions and pulls my folders that i archived a year ago. Unfortunately recent work I was saving my photos under a main folder and not the subfolders utilized within the software parameters, so no recent photos were available for formal retrieval. (my bad I guess for utilizing a short cut. There were so many subfolders and I didnt see the point of burying my files, so I left my photos under a primary folder...which doesn't appear in my actual retrieval mode of the software)


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## manaheim (Feb 22, 2013)

I googled a bit to see if I could find anything.  I saw some references to bad sectors requiring a checkdisk, also some stuff about Norton.  Can you post up a screenshot of what you're seeing?


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## Pukka312 (Feb 22, 2013)

manaheim said:


> I googled a bit to see if I could find anything.  I saw some references to bad sectors requiring a checkdisk, also some stuff about Norton.  Can you post up a screenshot of what you're seeing?



Ok, I can post a screenshot later today when I get near wifi (only have internet on my iPad and unfortunately the damn thing stopped syncing to my computer...I know, I seem to have all the luck). And I also googled and saw something about norton, but I assume that's not the issue. Though I hate Norton and would love to blame them for the problem, the norton software has been on this laptop all along and have never had an issue (not to mention I refused to pay the insane renewal rate and therefore can't blame Norton software updates, since it's been expired for months.) But will post a screenshot later this afternoon...it will likely be morning for you if you are in the U.S. (it's not even 9am yet for me here).


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## bratkinson (Feb 23, 2013)

It sounds like when you did your last copy to the external drive, you simply created a shortcut that pointed to the folder you copied. That'll happen if one is not careful. 

I had it happen to me a couple of weeks ago. But when a folder with more than 150 RAW pictures at 35mb each copied in less than a second, I knew something was wrong. Sure enough, all it did was to create a shortcut on the external drive, pointing back to the original folder on my hard drive.


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## Pukka312 (Feb 23, 2013)

Ok, so basically, before when I would plug in my external hard drive, I would have 3 folders and 2 application icons...where all of these other folders and files came from I don't know.  Either way, I am not sure why every single icon except one looks like a shortcut... how could I have created shortcuts on my external hard drive, and where would the originals go? I certainly don't have enough space on my computer to have reverse transferred.  But as you can see on the folder I've highlighted, when you see the file size in the bottom left, it certainly appears like all my files are gone. Right???


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## manaheim (Feb 23, 2013)

Oh.  Those are just shortcuts.

Right click on one and select properties and it will tell you where it points to.

I do see a folder with a lock on it too... pure speculation here but did you use that smartware software on another machine, or reinstall this one and have not yet installed smartware?  Might be why you can't see folders you usually see.

Ah... yes... 



Pukka312 said:


> It may be important to mention I was not using the software program it came with because on a previous laptop, it would not let me select which files and folders to back-up, (it was all or nothing) therefore I was advised by the manufacturer of the external hard drive to use it in the same respect that I would use a USB...so for a year



Though if you've been doing this for a bit and it suddenly changed that seems odd... but the fact that your husbands (I'm assuming same drive, same software?) is doing it too...

There's obviously some key bit you're not telling us (not intentionally, mind you... you just left something out somewhere and didn't realize it), but I bet if you install that software you'll see your files.


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## Mully (Feb 23, 2013)

Looks like these are alias file folders..... click on one to get info about the file... if it is 200k or less it is empty and only an alias file in which case you will need to search for the "real" file folders.  Also see how much disk space is being used on that drive.  It is difficult to tell where the original files are.


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## Pukka312 (Feb 23, 2013)

manaheim said:


> Oh.  Those are just shortcuts.
> 
> Right click on one and select properties and it will tell you where it points to.
> 
> ...



The first thing I tried was installing the software and try to retrieve the photos through that method but the only photos I could find were the ones initially backed up when I first bought the drive (and at that point realized I had no way to manually select which files to back up, so stopped utilizing that method and went the back door route of copying through my computer). I couldn't find any of my photos for the last year when I went through the standard retrieval.

And maybe your right, maybe I've forgotten a critical thing.  It just seemed odd because I've done nothing different in how I save or copy, and then bam! I open the drive and see this mess.  I also keep the external hard drive hidden so nobody decides to "play" with it. No idea why my husband's did the same thing (and he has yet to realize he has probably lost his files as well because I tried to show him but he never looked closely.)  Regardless, it sucks if I've somehow lost everything. I'm fairly computer savvy so I'm struggling to comprehend how I could have inadvertantly caused such a catastrophic errror.

I tried to search a few named files within the software and it came up empty.


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## manaheim (Feb 23, 2013)

Does your husbands drive work on a different computer?

What do you mean hidden??? Did you select to hide the actual drive or folders in the software?  Have you turned on the option to view hidden folders?  (Click start, type "folder options", run that util and select the option to show hidden folders)


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## Mully (Feb 23, 2013)

Did you check to see how much info is on the drive ...this will tell you if lost or hidden.


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## IByte (Feb 23, 2013)

If its win7 machine:  control panel >folder options >scroll down a little check show hidden folders> connect your external if not already done so.  


PS: this will work Vista, and XP, give or take a step or two.


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## cgipson1 (Feb 23, 2013)

Pukka312 said:


> manaheim said:
> 
> 
> > I googled a bit to see if I could find anything.  I saw some references to bad sectors requiring a checkdisk, also some stuff about Norton.  Can you post up a screenshot of what you're seeing?
> ...



So you let your antivirus expire? Bad idea....  you may be infected! At least get proactive... and download one of the decent free ones out there....

If your Ipad stopped syncing, find out why.. fix it (if you are computer savvy).  It sounds to me like you have several issues... and they may be compounding whatever caused the missing file issue (and yes, I have seen viruses do exactly the problem you are having)

(hint: Download Malware Bytes, install it, and do a scan in safe mode! Be curious as to what you find!  Then stick at least Microsoft Essentials on the system.... it is not the best, but it is FREE!   http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security-essentials-download)


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## Pukka312 (Feb 23, 2013)

cgipson1 said:


> Pukka312 said:
> 
> 
> > manaheim said:
> ...



I do use malware bytes on my other computer. And honestly, this laptop I use is not connected to the Internet. In the past 6 months, it has had wifi internet access 4 times...and not that I couldn't have gotten a virus at that time, but I felt the chances were remote as the only reason I connected was to upload photos. I did consider the possibility of a virus thou when I my husband's external hard drive responded like mine. 

The only reason I haven't downloaded a free virus protection software is because I have norton and norton is a pain to remove. Last time I used the norton removal software and still couldn't get an alternate virus software to run because they still found trace bits of norton. At that time I had to have the new software company remote access my computer and manually perform a seek and destroy of all norton files. Seeing as I'm in a 3rd world country with slow Internet, I have no desire to reattempt a removal of Norton on my own. I would also have to download the norton removal tool...which may take awhile (I tried an iTunes update here and it took 6hours). 

If I come back to the U.S. I feel like it would be easier to just purchase the damn norton update...I hate norton. Literally it is a deal-breaker on computers when I purchase. Unfortunately this one was a gift from my dad where the software was already installed.


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## Pukka312 (Feb 23, 2013)

manaheim said:


> Does your husbands drive work on a different computer?
> 
> What do you mean hidden??? Did you select to hide the actual drive or folders in the software?  Have you turned on the option to view hidden folders?  (Click start, type "folder options", run that util and select the option to show hidden folders)




Sorry, by hidden I meant I hide my external hard drive...between my kids and husband, I just keep it tucked away so that they can't mess with it.  regardless, I checked to see if I had any hidden files, and nada.

The external hard drive shows half of my 1 tb drive is full. I unfortunately cannot recall how much space my initial back up performed...I wish I paid attention to how much space I had left before this thing happened. My gut feeling is I should have less free space than that...I had even been thinking that i must be getting near my 1 TB soon. But shame on me for not checking. 

 when I go through the standard program retrieval I can see only files from my initial back up a year ago. I've used the built in search function as well and can't seem to find any recent folders saved.


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## Pukka312 (Feb 24, 2013)

Ah, I found them!!! They were not in a primary folder in retrieval mode, hence why my search failed under the main folder. Went to an alternate folder and voila! Files found.


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## Sw1tchFX (Feb 24, 2013)

pro tip: format the drive for ExFAT right when you take it out of the boc.


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