Empty HDD

[JankS]

Recently my HDD crashed so I brought it to the dealer under warranty. Now I installed my system on new HDD. All my backups were on external Seagate FreeAgent ExTreme drive. After connecting it back to my PC windows explorer shows it's empty. I run all the tests through windows as well as from original seagate software an they all say HDD is ok, no problems, no errors but still I can't see any files on it through explorer. Windows explorer shows drive has data on it and it's still possible to locate files using search function....
Any idea how to solve this problem?

 

[Hawkeye22]

Is it possible that somehow the files got flagged as hidden? You can test this with a single file first. Open a command prompt (possibly as admin) and type in:

attrib -h <full_path-to_file\file_name>

and see if that file now shows up in explorer. If it worked, you may be able to run this command:

attrib -h X:\*.*

where X is your drive letter. Unfortunately, you may have to do this for every directory on that drive, i.e attrib -h X:\photos\*.*.

 

[JankS]

This obviously is not simple hidden file problem. I found one suggestion where similar problem was solved by Testdisk. I downloaded and run TestDisk program after scan it gave me such result:
Invalid FAT boot sector and then - Harddisk seems too small, check size, HD jumpers, BIOS detection....
I have no idea how to proceed. Should I try to copy as much files as possible from this HDD and then reformat or there is still possibility to repair it with information intact?

 

[JankS]

This obviously is not simple hidden file problem. I found one suggestion where similar problem was solved by Testdisk. I downloaded and run TestDisk program after scan it gave me such result:
Invalid FAT boot sector and then - Harddisk seems too small, check size, HD jumpers, BIOS detection....
I have no idea how to proceed. Should I try to copy as much files as possible from this HDD and then reformat or there is still possibility to repair it with information intact?

 

[Hawkeye22]

I think I'd try to get the data off of it first, just in case the situation goes from bad to worse.

If the data is important to you, you could try getting it back with something like spinrite.

http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

 

[JankS]

Interesting advice by Testdisk as my HDD doesn' t have any jumpers and it' s not seen in BIOS...