Missing files?

Hey there! So, I was digging through some folders looking for files and something super weird happened. Like, out of nowhere, some folders appeared totally empty—no sign of my stuff anywhere—but then, when I went back a second later, everything was just... back where it belonged. It’s like magic, but not the good kind. They definitely weren't hidden or anything like that. To make things even creepier, this random .exe file just popped up in one of the folders out of thin air, and I swear I didn't put it there. How is that even possible? Just to be clear, all these files are just stuff I've been working on myself; I haven't been downloading or copying them from anywhere else, so it's not like someone's accessing them from another computer or whatever. Please help me out here, because this actually happened once before and I really want to stop it from happening again.

First thing’s first: go ahead and run a health check on those drives using some decent freeware. You talking about a desktop setup—like an internal drive—or are we dealing with an external USB drive here?

Built-in drive. I'm running Avast right now, but honestly? No way that's gonna be enough...

Not an antivirus. I'm talking about drive health—tools like CrystalDiskInfo, Hard Disk Sentinel, HD Tune, or just checking SMART diagnostics...

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolso.../tophddiag.htm

If you can't or simply won't bother with those, there's a basic tool built right into Windows. Just go to the drive icon, right-click, and run checkdisk. It won't cover everything, but it'll give you a decent baseline idea of what's going on with the drive.

Look, a hard drive is a delicate mechanical component. Eventually, things are going to start failing and performance will tank. Sometimes it’s fixable, but if you ignore the warning signs, things will only get worse until you're left staring at a dead drive and lost data...

Those specialized tools provide a ton of actual intel—total runtime, the specific condition of the internal components, and a rough estimate of how much life it has left in it...

Alright, let me dig into this and I'll get back to you. Honestly though, it feels super weird that it’s these specific files disappearing instead of just random junk, especially with this whole inquiry popping up. I can't help but feel like someone might be accessing them from another device... the first time I noticed anything was while I was at work, messing around with some files on my office desktop that has remote access enabled. But since this is happening on my personal laptop, the whole situation just feels really off...

So I ran an error scan using HD Tune and it says everything looks fine, but then it spit out these performance numbers that totally flew over my head... I have no clue if they're actually good or if I should be freaking out, since I’m definitely not some tech wizard. Anyway, I've got two drives in here now—just finished installing an extra SSD. Both of them passed the health check and error scan without any issues.

You absolutely, positively have to run a scan on your PC with some kind of solid antivirus software—it's just common sense these days! I've put together a pretty decent list of programs you might want to check out right here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372364,00.asp