Files Inaccessible

[SnoringFrog]

I have an external hardrive with about 40gb of files on it. It still registers that 40gb of it is being used, but I can only see about 1.5gb worth of files. I've been Googling it and trying the suggestions I found for about 3.5 hours now, and nothing seems to work. All the results seem to say it's a virus making all my folders register as "hidden", but I haven't been able to unhide through any method I've tried.

I also unplugged my external hardrive and accessed it on Ubuntu instead of XP, but I have the exact same problem there. Does anybody know how I can regain access to my files?


Edit: I'm not above wiping the whole drive clean and using a file recovery program to regain the more important files, if I know for sure that the file recovery will work. I'm not sure if Recuva will work after a drive has been reformatted or not, but since the files are still on the hardrive somewhere I was hoping to not have to do that.
[color="Red"]
REedit: Nevermind, problem was solved. Going through disk check on the drive cleared up the problem. [/color]

[Whitefang]

Good thing that you got your problem solved, losing data is not fun! For future reference, a disk format will almost always cause irreversible damage to the data on the disk. If there is any chance of recovery, you will have to pay through the noise for a data recovery service.

[Mithrandir]

Yeah... If you think the drive physically has a problem, there's one tool I usually recommend as before you consider going to a recovery company:
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm