Her's the story - A friend of mine brought over his external drive and said he couldnt figure out where his files were that he put on it. I took a look and there is a folder on the drive that says it hold 17k+ files ( he says mostly word doc's ) but I dont see anything??

I found out the pc he took these off was formatted in fat32 ( the pc is gone now and the drive wiped) so I think thats the problem , so does anyone know how to get my pc ( NTFS ) to see these files or am I off the mark and its a different problem ??

Like I say , right clicking the folder and checking properties show's 17k+ files but to open the folder...........empty.

EDIT - Can a mod move this to the troubleshooting section , sorry its late and im tired and posted in the wrong section DoH!! -Done

If he copied 'My Documents' the permissions may not work for you to see it. I don't know the solution though. Can you 'see' the drive on your computer or is it not there either?

Quote: Originally Posted by Dreyco If he copied 'My Documents' the permissions may not work for you to see it. I don't know the solution though. Can you 'see' the drive on your computer or is it not there either?

I dont have the oridgenal drive , but I can see the external drive on my pc, and i've copied files over and see them ........ I just dont see the files the he copied over.

Sorry for the n00b question but you do have veiw hidden files checked right?

The format of fat32 shouldn't be an issue. Its slow as hell on a machine with STFN...ooops sorry wrong one.....NTSF, but should still be readable with any OS. If the hidden folders is checked for veiwing...possible file damage?

I've seen this once before I think, it was when someone was using a passworded profile in WinME and copied their "Documents" directory to a WinXP folder. At the time, the solution was to remove the password protection in the original OS and recopy the files, unfortunately I don't know what you can do to solve the problem.

What do you see if you use a Vista machine to view the files? How about Linux? You could try booting a LiveCD like BackTrack (Remote-Exploit.org - Supplying offensive security products to the world) if you don't have a Linux box handy.

thanks for the Ideals

I'll give them a try - first a vista rig , then linux..........

and I'll double check that the hidden thing is checked ** it was rather late**

Well I got it sorted , and its soooooooooooooooooooooo cute what some folks do to save face or omit so you wont think thier IDIOTS!!!!!!

So , I made sure I had the hidden folders marked, then booted into linux *thanks Peng , I'm lovin' this distro ** and low and behold there are no Word docs or Jpegs other than what is installed with an OS . I call the customer and do a little detective work , come to find out he had formatted the PC when it first was giving him trouble ....................... woulda been nice to know this BEFORE i started freakin' out that I somehow lost all his files.

Anyhow thanks for all the help , and at least I got a new Linux OS to play with

Found this lil app on the WWW and wondered if anyone has ever tryed something like this

FAT16, FAT32, NTFS data recovery software - do it yourself data recovery and digital image recovery.

Its Zero assumption recovery , and says it can recover a formatted disk . I'm gonna give it a shot and see if it actually can. Just wondering if anyone has had luck trying this type of thing?