So, you are in trouble - a virus has infected your USB device. But did all your data on it appear to be deleted? Even if you cannot find the files, there is a chance that they might be hidden. Therefore, you need to check this before you are planning to format USB, having lost data forever. Sometimes hidden files are not displayed, even if you select the option “Show hidden files and folders”.
Caring about how to open hidden folders on a USB flash drive, you should master some basic command line skills.
First, find the letter of your USB drive. Open "My Computer" and find "Removable Disk", write down its letter designation.
Open a command prompt. To do this, click Start -> Run. Alternatively, you can press Windows Key and R at the same time. This will bring up a dialog box, and in it you should enter CMD without quotes, then click OK. Type the letter of your drive without quotes (H :, for example) and press Enter. Browse to the desired folder / subfolder if necessary. The easiest way to do this is to enter the CD and press the Tab key to go to the desired directory. To open hidden folders on a USB flash drive located in several subfolders, press "Enter" until you get to the desired destination.
To make your directories no longer hidden, type the command “Attrib folder name - H” and press Enter. This will help you solve the problem of how to open hidden folders on a USB flash drive. For example, to remove the hidden attribute of the Photos folder, you would type “Attrib Photos - H” (without quotation marks).
Open "My Computer" and find the corresponding object on your USB drive. It should not be hidden anymore.
The above instruction, thus, helps to solve the problem of how to open hidden folders on a USB flash drive, as well as files. For files, this command looks like “Attrib file_name - Hh” followed by Enter. An example of this spelling is Attrib My Document.doc - H. This command also works when installing an asterisk (*) or a question mark (?). Thus, you can make a whole group of data hidden if the computer does not open a large number of folders on the USB flash drive.
However, be careful about the data you make displayed. Sometimes important system files and folders are hidden to prevent them from being accidentally modified or deleted. If your USB device uses software that depends on these files, you can continue to receive error messages when accessing USB. Therefore, thinking about how to open hidden folders on a USB flash drive, do not forget that some of them are undesirable to display. It is better to give such data a catchy name (XXX or ABC) and subsequently make it hidden.
To do this, find the full path to them (for example, H: \ New folder \ XXX.jpg). Open a command prompt and type cmd.exe. After that, enter the command Attrib / S / D 'full path' + S + H (In this example, it will look: Attrib / S / D + S + HH: \ New folder \ .jpg).
In addition, remember that it is almost impossible to defend against malware and viruses in full, so it is advisable to store the necessary information not only on one flash drive, but also on other media.