I copied some data for a friend to an external HDD.
The PC (windows) was crashed and no longer wanted to boot. so I put the harddisk into a linux-server and it worked perfect all data was there.
I tried to use the USB disk directly in the linux machine but the parition tables where a little weird and not knowing what was on the disk I decided to use my windows PC to copy the data..
I shared the original disk with samba and copied all the data to the external hard-disk.
My Windows Vista PC could see all the files and read them without any problems.
So I gave the USB disk back to the owner off the data but the same evening they called me to tell me that the disk only contains directories and no files, weird..
Today I visited them to take a look at the disk with my own laptop.
The disk only shows directories but right clicking also shows there are files.
It does not matter to take ownership or if you try to add your user to the disk, it still shows no files.
If you try to copy the direcories it will also copy the files but they will not show up.
It seems the files are all marked as system files and will never show up until you change the view settings on windows.
I chanced the permissions on all the files and folders with the following command:
attrib -R -A -H -S f:/*.* /D /S ( — my drive was f:/ do not use this on c:/ !! — )
Now all files are visible again to the users..