M.2 drive is empty, yet full...

[Brodaag]

So I was troubleshooting an m.2 drive and I took my existing drive out, and put the new problem one in.  When I was done I replaced the original.  It appears to function fine but when I explore it all the folders are now gone.  The available space remains the same as before however, as though it is full.  Anyone had this happen before?  It was my steam library and I'd really like to avoid downloading that stuff again.

 

It's windows 10, a crucial 1tb m.2 nvme drive, can't really think of anymore relevant information.  I did an error check and it "found and corrected" it, but nothing changed.  There are no previous restore points available either. There really isn't anything I can do from what I can tell but reinstall.  The drive appears to be functional.  It's as though some one hid the folders.

[Chiyawa]

Oh, I think the drive has been encrypted, so using other computer to read the drive is not possible. I had this happen with Windows 8, and after I took out the HDD, I couldn't read it from other machine (Note, USB external SATA reader is also no good, even using the same machine).

 

Too bad. What you can really do is plug in that drive back to where it belongs, boot it up, then transfer your files to an external drive or secondary drive.

[Guest]

You have Schroedinger's hard drive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat