The flash drive is full and the files cannot be opened. What to do if files and folders are not visible on the flash drive
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When working with USB media Situations often arise when some files (or even all information on the media) become invisible.
This problem may be rooted in big number reasons.
Common reasons for file “invisibility”
- The files on the flash drive are not visible, what to do in this situation? Operating systems allow you to limit the visibility of files.
In this case, such information does not disappear from the media, but the user cannot see it.
The reason for this could be a malfunction of the application, the deliberate actions of another user using this media, or the result of a virus that hides files on the drive. Ways to restore hidden files on your flash drive we will describe below. - The files were written to the media with an error. This situation can occur when the flash drive is unsafely removed from the computer. In this case, some files may not be completely recorded. In this case, such a security threat will either be read incorrectly or not be displayed at all.
- The files were deleted by the user, antivirus program or as a result of a failure. We will describe methods for recovering information below.
What to do?
What to do if there are no files visible on the flash drive? Firstly, if the files on your flash drive have become hidden, you need to determine the reasons for the invisibility.
Only correct definition allow you to choose the right course of action and open these hidden files on the flash drive.
Secondly, It’s worth trying to open the flash drive on another computer or through another operating system. Some reading errors can be corrected more new version Windows.
Ways to show hidden files
To solve this problem you can use: standard means your operating system, and using various third-party programs.
Instructions for Windows XP
Instructions for the Total Commander program
Showing hidden files on your flash drive will also help Total Commander. To do this you need:
- Open the folder in the program.
- On the toolbar, find the icon in the form of a sheet with exclamation point(in some versions of the program - an asterisk) with the inscription “ Hidden elements».
When activated, all hidden files will appear semi-transparent.
Information from the media disappeared after being scanned by an antivirus program
This situation may occur if the files contain potentially dangerous information. In this case, most antivirus programs will place the file in a quarantine zone for further processing.
To restore them, you need to find “Quarantined files” in the antivirus menu and restore (or delete infected) files in the menu that appears. After this, the information will appear on the media.
It is worth saying that if the information is recognized as malicious, then the antivirus can offline mode delete it from the media without the possibility of subsequent recovery.
In this case, the list of antivirus operations performed will contain information about the infected file and the reasons for deletion.
Problems accessing the flash drive
More common problem What is more important than the visibility of the file is the denial of access to the flash drive. This manifests itself as follows.
You insert the flash drive into the slot, try to open it and receive the message “Access denied”. There are two main reasons for this problem.
Firstly, the media fails. In this case, it is almost impossible to restore the functionality of your device on your own and you will need to contact service centers.
Secondly, a write error may occur on the media due to unsafe ejection and interruption of the writing process.
In this case, to restore full access It is necessary to check the media for errors. For this:
- Open the My Computer window and find your removable media. If it is not in this window, then most likely the flash drive has failed.
- Click on the flash drive shortcut right click and select “Properties” - “Tools” - “Check volume for errors” in the menu. This check is highly likely to solve problems. If this does not happen, then a breakdown is likely.
They are the main method of transporting data. To copy files, users connect their flash drives to dozens of various computers. It is not surprising that malware developers often use flash drives to distribute malware.
By connecting your flash drive to a computer infected with viruses, you will instantly become a victim. The virus is copied onto the flash drive, and your files are modified. In most such cases, after a flash drive is infected with a virus, the following picture is observed: no files are visible on the flash drive, it seems that the disk is completely empty. But when checking occupied space it turns out that the files take up free place on disk. Accordingly, nothing has been deleted, you just do not have access to the files. In this article we will talk about how to solve this problem.
Step No. 1. Check for antivirus.
If no files are visible on the flash drive, it means it is infected with viruses. Therefore, you should not connect it to all computers in a row, in the hope that your files will become available on one of the computers. So you just spread the virus and do good service virus writer.
You can only connect an infected flash drive to computers that are protected by an antivirus. Before connecting the flash drive, you need to make sure that the antivirus is running and running. Computers with disabled or unloaded antivirus will also become a victim of infection.
Step No. 2. Checking the flash drive for viruses.
After connecting the flash drive, the first thing you need to do is . To do this, open “My Computer,” right-click on the flash drive and run a virus scan.
Step No. 3. Enable display of hidden files.
After the virus scan is completed, you can work with the flash drive. If there are no files visible on the flash drive, this means that they are hidden. To view hidden files, you need to enable the corresponding function.
To do this, in any window, hold down the Alt key and open the “Tools - Folder Options” menu.
In the window that opens, go to the “View” tab. Here you need to uncheck the box next to “Hide protected system files” and check the box next to “and disks”.
Step No. 4. View hidden files on the flash drive.
After these steps, you need to open the flash drive again. Now you can . Hidden files and folders are displayed with translucent icons, making them easy to distinguish from regular files and folders.
In order to turn hidden files and folders into normal ones, just call up the object’s properties and uncheck the “Hidden” box.
There are no files or folders visible on the flash drive and the memory has disappeared somewhere. What to do, how to open them, where to go? There are a lot of questions, and it is very difficult to find answers to them, even now. But it’s good that you met me and my site in life :).
Actually the reason is when files and folders are not visible on the flash drive, only one - malware. But the funny thing is that when you insert a flash drive into another computer and treat it for viruses, the files and folders do not begin to appear after treatment.
Surely there will be smart people who will say - they say, you make sure that hidden files and folders are hidden, and then in the properties you uncheck the “Hidden” item and click “OK”. Gentlemen “experts” - this does not help in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Many people begin to do one very capacious procedure, I once did it myself, they take all the hidden files, make them displayed, copy them to the computer, then delete them from the flash drive, after which they are made not hidden on the computer itself, and then they are transferred to the computer again. flash drive. And that's good if the files were few and a bit fun, but what if that wasn't the case. For me, this procedure took a couple of hours.
What to do if there are no files visible on the flash drive? Solution.
In order to make files and folders visible, we must first download and install the Total Commander program, you can find out more about this in.
Now we insert our flash drive into the flash drive and open Total Commander. Especially for the sake of this article, I went and infected my flash drive - successfully :).
To begin, select your flash drive in the Total Commander program, you can look at the name of the flash drive drive in “Computer” or “My Computer”, circled in green. Now we need to see all the hidden files on our flash drive. To do this, simply click on the button circled in red, which has an exclamation mark in a yellow triangle. By the way, if you have a slightly different panel displayed, and this button is not there, then click successively on the buttons on the edge, circled in black, and the one you need will definitely appear in one of these buttons.
Hidden folders will be displayed faintly, you will immediately see them, blue arrows point to them.
Well, now let’s actually do it so that files and folders were displayed.
Click once with the left (EXACTLY LEFT) mouse button on the hidden file. Next, click File -> Change Attributes.
After which the window shown in the figure below will open in front of you.
Remove the boxes or checkmarks, depending on what you have, from all the items circled in red in the picture above. After that click OK
All. Let's look at our folder - it has become visible.
If it doesn’t work the first time, repeat the procedure, I’ve used this technique many times and it always worked.
That's all. Good luck!
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Send
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When working with USB drives, situations often arise when some of the files (or even all the information on the drive) become invisible.
There can be a number of reasons behind this problem.
Common reasons for file “invisibility”
- The files on the flash drive are not visible, what to do in this situation? Operating systems allow you to limit the visibility of files.
In this case, such information does not disappear from the media, but the user cannot see it.
The reason for this could be a malfunction of the application, the deliberate actions of another user using this media, or the result of a virus that hides files on the drive. We will describe below ways to recover hidden files on your flash drive. - The files were written to the media with an error. This situation can occur when the flash drive is unsafely removed from the computer. In this case, some files may not be completely recorded. In this case, such a security threat will either be read incorrectly or not be displayed at all.
- The files were deleted by the user, an antivirus program, or as a result of a crash. We will describe methods for recovering information below.
What to do?
What to do if there are no files visible on the flash drive? Firstly, if the files on your flash drive have become hidden, you need to determine the reasons for the invisibility.
Only the correct definition will allow you to choose the right course of action and open these hidden files on the flash drive.
Secondly, It’s worth trying to open the flash drive on another computer or through another operating system. Some reading errors may be corrected by a newer version of Windows.
Ways to show hidden files
To solve this problem, you can use both standard tools of your operating system and various third-party programs.
Instructions for Windows XP
Instructions for the Total Commander program
Total Commander will also help you show hidden files on your flash drive. To do this you need:
- Open the folder in the program.
- On the toolbar, find an icon in the form of a leaf with an exclamation mark (in some versions of the program - an asterisk) with the inscription “Hidden elements”.
When activated, all hidden files will appear semi-transparent.
Information from the media disappeared after being scanned by an antivirus program
This situation may occur if the files contain potentially dangerous information. In this case, most antivirus programs will place the file in a quarantine zone for further processing.
To restore them, you need to find “Quarantined files” in the antivirus menu and restore (or delete infected) files in the menu that appears. After this, the information will appear on the media.
It is worth saying that if information is recognized as malicious, then the antivirus can remove it from the media offline without the possibility of subsequent recovery.
In this case, the list of antivirus operations performed will contain information about the infected file and the reasons for deletion.
Problems accessing the flash drive
A more common problem than file visibility is that access to the flash drive is denied. This manifests itself as follows.
You insert the flash drive into the slot, try to open it and receive the message “Access denied”. There are two main reasons for this problem.
Firstly, the media fails. In this case, it is almost impossible to restore the functionality of your device on your own and you will need to contact service centers.
Secondly, a write error may occur on the media due to unsafe ejection and interruption of the writing process.
In this case, to restore full access, it is necessary to check the media for errors. For this:
- Open the “My Computer” window and find your removable media. If it is not in this window, then most likely the flash drive has failed.
- Right-click on the flash drive shortcut and select “Properties” - “Tools” - “Check volume for errors” from the menu. This check will most likely solve the problem. If this does not happen, then a breakdown is likely.
For many users computer equipment, there are cases that after copying data to a USB flash drive, when reusing The flash drive does not see files. If we look at the volume occupied on it, we will see that the flash drive is full.
Folders are missing on the flash drive???
And so in this article we will talk about what to do when the flash drive does not see the files? And so, if you tear off a flash drive, and there are no your files there or instead there are shortcuts with the same names as the files, then this article is just for you. This means that there is a virus on the flash drive, after removing which you need to follow the steps below.
Note: The method will be described below as in manual mode do visible files to flash drives, without loss of information. If you don’t have time or can’t do this manually, write on the forum. And we will send a body file to solve this problem.
The first step to solve the problem “Flash drive does not see files” Open the flash drive, which should have files, but there are none. Go to the Tools tab - Folder Options.
Note: if you have installed operating system Windows 7, you need to press a key on ALT keyboard, a panel will appear where you can select Tools – Folder Options. In Windows XP it is displayed by default.
A window will open in which you need to select the “View” tab.
In this tab, scroll the slider down, uncheck the boxes next to the items shown below. And uncheck the “Show hidden files and folders” checkbox. Click apply.
We go to the flash drive, we see the disappeared files that we copied before. But they are shown as hidden. To display them in standard form, you need to create new folders and transfer data from hidden folders in them, and remove the hidden ones. If you have a lot of hidden folders, doing this manually will take a long time. Write on the forum and we will email you a batch file for automatic solution Problems.