An external hard drive is a portable storage device that connects to a computer via USB, eSATA, or Firewire, for the transfer and backup of large amounts of data – far more than most laptops or tablets can hold. Its convenience derives from its capacity, speed, ease of use, offline functionality, and compact size. Leading brands include Seagate, Buffalo, Toshiba, WD, Samsung, and Kingston, among others.

Despite these advantages, users can still encounter various external hard drive issues, with “Files missing from external hard drive but space still occupied” being a common one.

In this article, we will discuss the possible reasons for missing files on an external hard drive and then provide corresponding solutions. But before we start, let's first recover lost files and folders from the external hard drive using the Data Recovery Wizard tool to ensure no data is lost during the process.

How to Recover Lost Files from an External Hard Drive

Data Recovery Wizard Pro is a professional hard drive recovery tool that has helped millions of people recover deleted or hidden photos, documents, videos, music, and many other types of files from various storage devices. It can retrieve permanently lost data from HDDs, SSDs, USB flash drives, external hard disks, and more.

Download this powerful file recovery program now and easily restore lost files from your external hard drive.

Step 1: Choose and scan the external hard drive

    1. Download and install a data recovery tool on your computer or laptop. 2. Connect the external hard drive to your computer. 3. Run the data recovery wizard and select the external hard drive from the list of drives. Then, click on "Scan" to look for lost data.
Select External Hard Drive

Step 2: Check the scan results

  • Data recovery software will immediately scan all data on the selected drive, including deleted, corrupted, and existing data.
  • You can use the filter feature to quickly locate a specific type of file, such as images, Word, Excel, PDF, videos, emails, and more.
Scan External Hard Drive

Step 3: Preview and recover the data

    • Double-click a file from the scan results to preview it.
    • Select the files you need and click "Recover."
    • Choose another drive to save your recovered files, not the original one.
Preview and recover data

After recovering all the necessary data to another secure location, you can resolve the issue of lost files on an external hard drive that still occupy space with the following methods.

What could have caused the file to go missing?

When you find files missing from an external hard drive, avoid writing any new data to the device to prevent overwriting. The reason for this issue could be one of the following.

    • The file is hidden, not lost.
    • The file system is corrupted, or an unsupported file system is on the device.
    • The CheckedValue has changed.
    • The image file is corrupted.
    • Malware or a virus attack might have caused the loss of files.

How to Solve the Problem of Missing Files on External Hard Drive

Now that we understand the sources of the problem, we know how to fix it.

Method 1: Recover Hidden Files from External Hard Drive

    Type cmd in the Windows search bar, then right-click "Command Prompt" and select "Run as administrator." Determine which drive the hidden files are on. If it's Drive D, type attrib -s -h -r /s /d *.* and press Enter.

Fix Files Disappeared from External Hard Drive – Show Hidden Files

Aside from the CMD method, there are four other possible ways to show hidden files on your hard drive. You can find the full answer in the link.

Method 2: Repair File System Errors

    - Right-click on the external hard drive and select "Properties." - Click on the "Tools" tab, then hit the "Check" button. - Check the box for "Automatically fix file system errors." - Click "Start" to initiate the repair process and wait for it to complete.

Fix files missing from external hard drive – Check and fix file system errors

Method 3: Change a Registry Value

    Press Windows + R to open the Run command. Type in Regedit, then click "OK." Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWAL. Check if the "CheckedValue" data value is set to "1". If not, delete the "CheckedValue", create a new "DWORD" in the empty space, and rename it to "CheckedValue". Then, set the Value data to "1".

Fix Files Disappeared from External Hard Drive – Check Registry Value

Method 4: Restart Your Computer and Reconnect the External Hard Drive

If the image of the drive in memory is corrupted and the operating system doesn't refresh it in time, your files may appear to be missing from the external hard drive. In this case, try restarting your computer and reconnecting the external hard drive to your PC. Then, check if you can see the files on the device.

Method 5: Scan the External Hard Drive with an Antivirus

Our computers or storage devices are at risk of virus attacks every day. The ones we are familiar with are shortcut viruses and ransomware. The former hides all your original files, turning them into shortcuts, while the latter deletes your original files and generates virus files. When faced with such issues, you can first use a virus attack data recovery tool to restore hidden or deleted files. Then, scan and clean your computer with advanced antivirus software.

Conclusions

That's it for the solutions to external hard drive files missing but space still used. You can try all the methods above to fix the issue. Whether you are dealing with an external hard drive or the HDD/SSD on your computer, salvaging data should be the first step when the device acts up. Hence, it's necessary to have a data recovery tool ready on your computer.

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