cssider

First, open the folders that are showing. You may have dragged the missing folders onto one of the showing folders. If you did, the missing folder will be listed inside one of the showing folders. Good luck.

EdJ0307 Loc: out west someplace

You mean the Apple store will fix a Seagate, Western Digital, or whatever hard drive? And for free? Boy, that's great.

SS319

And, at the end of the day, please buy a second 3TB drive or invest in cloud storage. The known life of any hard drive ever invented is from 30 seconds to 30 years with the probability of failure during any given interval of time being equal to the probability of failure at any other given interval of time.

What we know: Hard Drives will fail
What we don't know: When!

The probability of two separate hard drives failing at the same time is incredibly small compared the the probability of either hard drive failing at any given time.

Oh, by the way, with large commercial cloud storage (µsoft, Google, Amazon) there is typically 3 to 8 copies of your data in existence at any given time - often in different regions of the world so your data is inherently safe from anything that would harm it. I know, with µsoft, you have 90 days to notify them of an inadvertent deletion and still be able to recover the data.

Caysnowman Loc: MN & SC

I have read that for some reason the MTBF of 3 TB HD's are lower than other capacity drives - more problems - and that it is not dependent on Brand. Don't know if it is an inherent design problem or something else.

Bill

Tim Stapp Loc: Mid Mitten

You pay for that up front.. Nothing in life is free.

10MPlayer Loc: California

I have, on several occasions, accidentally dragged and dropped a folder into another folder without even realizing I'd done it. If you can remember the names of any of the files, do a search and they may turn up inside another folder. Another thing you can do with Windows is go to a restore point that was set a few days earlier than the day when the files went missing. You would need to have an approximate date to do that and you would need to have allowed your operating system to automatically set restore points. If you haven't done it now would be a good time to start.

JeffDavidson Loc: Originally Detroit Now Los Angeles

You may have accidentally dragged them into another folder. search for the name of a folder that is missing and chances are that you will find them.

MrBob Loc: lookout Mtn. NE Alabama

Do you not have Apple Time doing auto backups...?

Toment Loc: FL, IL

Try using spotlight to search the drive for these photos if you named them something special or you know the dates or the file number, etc. They are probably on that drive somewhere.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

Before you do anything else, do a search for one or more files you know the name of.
That will show you if they exist (and they probably do), it will tell you where they are.
If you need more help, you can private message me. >Alan