Internal drive full but windows says its empty

[halcyon162]

I've had a internal Hitachi hard drive running on windows vista 64bit for a few year now. Recently after getting a really bad virus I had to take it to someone to fix it. So I removed the hard before taking to the store. When I got my computer back I hooked the hard drive back into the case. Now here is the problem. I have about 300 gb of data on the drive, the computer sees the drive and it has the same letter assigned to it but when I click open the drive it says that the file is empty. I've run antivirus on it with no problems, I've unplugged and replugged it and I've switched the wires around. Please help.

 

[Hawkeye22]

1. You may have reinfected your drive if the data drive still had copies of the virus on it.

2. The virus turned on the hidden attribute on all files and folders. If this is the case, open a command promt as administrator and type:

attrib -H X:\ /D /S

where X is your drive letter and hit the enter key.

 

[thently]

You can also do this without command prompt. right click on drive letter and uncheck hidden box it will try to unhide all files. Also to confirm this is the issue go into controll panel click folder options an then hit view at the top and selet show hidden files from the list to see if they are there.

Thent

 

[halcyon162]

Thank you both for the reply. The files were indeed hidden but I'm having some trouble permanently having these files returned to normal. I've tried both suggestions but I'm having a little difficulty.

 

[halcyon162]

Never mind, I'm an idiot. thank you both the problem has been solved.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Care to share what you did so that others can learn from this?

 

[halcyon162]

Yes I tried to do the command prompt but I wasn't doing it right, So I did what Thently recommended and selected all the files and unchecked the hidden file box.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Ok, glad that worked for you and the files were just hidden and not destroyed.

 

[halcyon162]

I'm very glad that it was only hidden. I would have lost so many personal pictures. Thank you for the help.

 

[halcyon162]

Best answer selected by halcyon162.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey