Flash media are usually very vulnerable to virus attack. They used someone else's computer - and all the files had already disappeared somewhere. But don't worry - it is quite easy to restore them.
Why do files disappear on a USB flash drive?
Surely, every user at least once, but faced such a problem when, after working on someone else's computer and saving all the data to a USB flash drive, at home he was surprised to find that there were no files on it - it was empty. Are you starting to remember when you managed to delete files or, perhaps, completely forgot to save them to a USB flash drive? But documents and files can be very important. How could this happen?
This usually happens when viruses live on the computer. Some viruses can change the attributes of folders and files to "hidden" or "system". Thus, they seem to delete files, but in fact they just make them invisible. To verify this, you need to check the amount of used memory on the device. To do this, go to "My Computer" and see how much space is occupied on the flash drive. If the volume is greater than zero, it means that all files remain intact, they are simply invisible to the user.
Recovering "deleted" files
There are several ways to make all files visible again. The easiest one is to enable the display of hidden folders and files in Windows. To do this, open any folder and select "Tools" - "Folder Options" in the menu bar. Then go to the "View" tab and select "Show hidden files and folders". If after that all the "deleted" files are visible on the flash drive, then you need to select them and open their properties with the right mouse button. In the window that appears, uncheck the "hidden" attribute and click "Apply". But as a rule, this method helps very rarely.
Another way to make files visible is with the command line. To do this, go to "Start", select the line "Run", enter the word "cmd" (without quotes) and press Enter. In the window that appears, you need to type "dirn: / x" (without quotes). N is the letter assigned to the flash drive, which can be viewed through the "My Computer" shortcut.
This command will show a list of all files on the flash drive. If there is a folder with the name "E2E2 ~ 1", then you need to rename it to "ren E2E2 ~ 1 abc" (instead of "abc" you can write any other name of the folder). Next, go to the USB flash drive - and all the data will be in the "abc" folder.
You can also use various file managers. They usually show hidden files by default, and you just need to copy them to another location.
That's basically it. The most important thing is not to forget to remove the virus on the flash drive with the help of antivirus, otherwise the problem will repeat itself.
