Sharing missing files in a drive.
File sharing in some cases can be a problem as they may appear to somewhat hidden but many instances this is not the case. They can be hidden sometimes and hence the sharing of these files cannot be possible until a number of issues are addressed that might be causing files appear to be missing.
Take for an instance one working from home via VPN (Net Motion Mobility), one could be having several mapped network drives. All could be okay maybe except one, it could be showing only part of the contents of a folder. Taking an example of about 15 folders in the network drive, and only one is being seen. It would be advisable to, first of all, check the permissions for all available folders in that drive are the same and actually inherit from the parent. Check also that the hidden folders/files box is not checked. It would also be helpful to disconnect that drive and remap it again. Alternatively, check the other network drives or even reboot and try out the same things again.
If at all these possible solutions don’t work at all, then consider checking if offline is not on that particular sharing, it could be possible that it detects a slow link and forcing offline. This issue could also be caused by DFS. If the DFS is not replicating to a particular partner and access from the VPN which consequently places the user in a site that didn’t have all data. Otherwise to sort out the offline issue as mentioned above, just go to share properties of the intended folder, click on advanced sharing, go to caching, then choose “No files or programs from shared folder are available offline”. This is most cases is the problem.
When this is not the case and files are really missing in a drive, the problem could be possible that the drive is not properly partitioned and those partitions allocated after formatting the drive. In order to check and correct this issue, check for actual drive space by looking the drive in the disk management. Ensure that there is no unallocated space in the drive. If there is, just format and assign a letter to the unallocated space of that drive. The files will be recovered if they had been hidden.
There are cases when the files could be deleted from the drive. There is a possibility that the files could still be available in the recycle bin. If this is the case, then the files could be easily restored to the initial location in the drive. Otherwise, try third-party recovery tool.