My Passport Hard Disk files gone missing, but free space doesn't change?

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for Windows
1

I was browsing with my computer like usual. Then, suddenly an error pops up. “WD Smartware has stopped working”. Then, I went to Hard Disk and found out that there were absolutely no folders nor files there. And yes, I already checked for hidden files and folders. It’s always activated on my computer.

Absolutely empty, however the free space (I have a 465.7 GB hard disk btw) was only 332 GB (used space: 133 GB). I restarted my computer and it showed 5 files/folders (still only 332 GB of free space):

Data (Where I keep my files)

RECYCLER (Hidden, empty)

msdia80.dll

WD Quick Formatter.exe

WD SmartWare.exe

THE PROBLEM IS NOT FINISHED

I went to my “Data” folders and there are 2 folders: “Videos” and “Music” (yes, I made those folders). Those 2 folders are empty. I used to have files there, but they are absolutely empty. No hidden files.

I tried retrieving files and folders, but on WD SmartWare, my “Backup” and “Retrieve” are always greyed out. I tried updating my WD SmartWare program. That didn’t solve my problem. They are still greyed out.

Additional details:

On my WD SmartWare computer program, My Passport shows 332.1 GB of free space, and 133.6 GB of “System”

My Question is: What should I do? I have high hopes for this because the free and used space on my hard disk don’t change when my Music and Video files dissapear.

2

I am facing similar issue; I’ve been using MyBook (1 TB) for over 2 years and today all of a sudden my crucial data has gone missing. In fact, the drive is not showing any WD driver or AutoPlay option which was available only a couple of hours ago. I want to know how can I recover my data as it was actually critical data, which as per drive properties should be there. 167 GB used space means that the data is present somewhere but how can it be recovered is the question? P.S. I never used WD Smart-ware earlier else maybe I could’ve created a backup.

3

That happened once to me. All of the default files gone missing. However, I didn’t care about it because there was only 1 song, only 1 song that I had downlaoded from the internet, not the ones that I had created.

4

I know it’s been a while but I hope this can help someone else down the road.

Freeware program called Recuva - I was able to use Deep Scan to restore all of my lost data - I had the same issue you do got all my files back.  It took about 6 hours though, so it’s not a fast process but it worked.