can't see files on hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fred Todt
  • Start date Start date
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Fred Todt

I tried to read an external hard drive that I backed all of my data files up
to a few months ago, and I can't see any of my files. Instead, there are a
few hundred files with names like _m_ (where "_" is really a "box" that
represents an unprintable character, I think?). These files all appear, in
the "Details" view. to be about 232KB in size, except when I look at the
properties of any one of them, it shows as 0 bytes in size. The dates on
the files are 2034, and they are subdivided into groups that have dates that
are 8 days apart: e.g. 8/5/2034, 8/13/2034, 8/21/2034, etc. There appears
to be very little free space on the drive, but I don't think it should be
more than half full.

I have no idea where to start looking for help. Has anyone seen anything
like this before? I'd appreciate suggestions for keywords that I might
GOOGLE to find out what's going on and how to recover my files.

Thanks for reading this far. My specifics:
10GB hard drive
Connected via PCMCIA card to an 5-year old HP laptop running Windows/XP home
edition.
 
Fred said:
I tried to read an external hard drive that I backed all of my data files up
to a few months ago, and I can't see any of my files. Instead, there are a
few hundred files with names like _m_ (where "_" is really a "box" that
represents an unprintable character, I think?). These files all appear, in
the "Details" view. to be about 232KB in size, except when I look at the
properties of any one of them, it shows as 0 bytes in size. The dates on
the files are 2034, and they are subdivided into groups that have dates that
are 8 days apart: e.g. 8/5/2034, 8/13/2034, 8/21/2034, etc. There appears
to be very little free space on the drive, but I don't think it should be
more than half full.

I have no idea where to start looking for help. Has anyone seen anything
like this before? I'd appreciate suggestions for keywords that I might
GOOGLE to find out what's going on and how to recover my files.

Thanks for reading this far. My specifics:
10GB hard drive
Connected via PCMCIA card to an 5-year old HP laptop running Windows/XP home
edition.
Click to expand...

How exactly did you perform the backup?

Steve N.
 
How exactly did you perform the backup?
Steve N.
Click to expand...

Thank for your reply.

I simply copied files from my internal hard drive to my external hard drive.
Windows XP, drag and drop. I made two successful monthly backups that way
in September and October. But, now things are screwy.
-Fred
 
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