Can see files but not folders

[alkindyss]

Hi all,

Yesterday I faced a strange problem where I had a 300GB external HDD full of data. Suddenly all data under all folders were lost. The strange thing is that all folders were there but with no data. "Show hidden files & folders" was enabled. So I took the HDD, connected it to another computer and found that all the files were present. I thanked God for that and suspected that the other machine might be having a virus or something that prevents seeing the data. So I ran a full system scan but found no viruses.

I just want to know how come the files only were hidden but the folders were showing up. Any ideas?

[Jon8RFC]

Hmm...the first thing that comes to mind is the file system. Windows 98/ME cannot read NTFS, which is commonly used by 2000/XP. I'm not sure how it differs between the Mac OS and XP.

The second thing is that maybe the computer that couldn't read the files, can't recognize drives larger than 137gb.

What the the operating systems and service packs on the different computers?