An image was cut and pasted from a Windows PC onto a USB drive. Both people initially confirmed that the transfer appeared complete, but the file was not checked afterward and is now missing. The USB drive was later checked on a MacBook Air and two Windows PCs, including the original computer. Hidden files and folders were enabled, but the image still cannot be found. What could have caused this, and is there a way to recover it?
3 Answers
Use Terminal on the Mac to check whether the file exists on the USB even if Finder is not showing it. Type `cd ` with a space after it, drag the USB icon into the Terminal window, and press Return. Then run `ls` to list the visible files, or `ls -la` to include hidden files. If the image is not listed there either, it is probably missing from the drive rather than merely hidden.
Stop using the USB drive for now and try a file-recovery tool. The less new data written to it, the better the chance of recovering the missing image. Recuva is a relatively simple option to start with on Windows.
If the drive was unplugged without being safely ejected, the transfer may not have fully completed, or the file system could have been damaged. A failing USB drive is another possibility. Since the drive has already been checked on multiple computers, recovery software and a drive-health check are worth trying.
It was safely removed, so I’ll look into the possibility that the drive itself is failing.
I’ll try checking it through Terminal and see whether the file appears in the directory listing.