I am having a huge issue with some missing files from my external hardrive.
I am a professional photographer and I have been taking and storing digital images since 2005. I had received an external hardrive (Iomega eGo) as a gift in 2008, but only used it to transfer files I was working with. I was storing my images on my computer and image CDs.
In 2011 I purchased a new laptop (Acer Aspire) which was to be my primary work computer, and I transferred all of my image files onto this computer. I also backed my computer up on to the Iomega hardrive, including my images files.
In 2013 I was accepted to an MFA program and at that point, decided that it was probably not the best idea to have all of my images stored on my laptop, so I transferred my entire image archive to the Iomega hardrive. However all of the computers in my program, including the one in my studio, are Macs and would not recognize my Iomega hardrive, so I purchased a WD Passport external hardrive (which also had much more space) and created a partition. I then copied my entire image archive to WD Passport.
I haven't accessed my image archive much at school, but recently decided to re-organize my image archive and print some of the images out. When I went into the image archive, I was dismayed to discover that all of the folders from my image archive were present, but none of the images files were actually there, only a Picasa file called ".picasa" and the file type is "Configuration settings." This is the same for every single folder, there are no image files, just this .picasa file. I did have Picasa installed on my computer, but I hated the interface so I un-installed it at some point, then re-installed it a few months ago for quick image editing.
When I go to my backup and try to restore the original files, the same thing happens: it restores the original folder structures, but each folder only contains the .picasa file. I have tried from two different restore points, 2012 and 2014, and both have the same thing.
I tried multiple image recovery softwares and each only recover images from 2014 on or recover files that are "invalid." I am really stressed about this because although I have some images saved on CDs and facebook, etc, not all are saved in a secondary location, including some family photos.
Any help would be much appreciated, and I am happy to provide more information as needed.

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