We all use the USB as the detachable drive to transfer data, since
its convenient to carry and can be easily operated plus it provides
great speed in data transferring. Today, I came around a weird issue on
my USB drive, which I think I should share with you all. I plugged my
USB into my colleague’s laptop in order to transfer some files. When I
plugged the USB back to my laptop, the files & folders in USB turn
into shortcuts

This was crazy and I couldn’t delete these folder shortcuts, because the target file location was
Command Prompt itself. Also you can’t move or delete the files stored in the front. In addition to this, there was a
.Trashes
folder inside the USB. It led me to suspect that some sort of virus may
have got admitted into my USB. I didn’t waste any time and scanned the
USB using my native security suite, i.e.
Windows Defender.
Windows Defender,
on its part found something malicious. It performed some cleaning
action and asked me to reboot. I did it, but there was still no change
in the situation, as far as USB drive was concerned.
I searched on
the Internet & came to know that there were many others like me
facing this weird issue. I found a working solution and consider it
worth sharing it here.
Files & folders in USB turn into shortcuts
1. Make sure that you have
Hidden Files checked on in the ribbon inside
Windows 8 File Explorer. Now open the
Command Prompt with administrative privileges and type this command and hit
Enter. Here, substitute
h: with your USB drive letter.
attrib -h -r -s /s h:\*.*
2.
After doing this, come back to the USB drive, you’ll find that command
has been executed, but the shortcuts are still there. Since the files
got executed, you can move them easily to your desired target location.
3.
Move all the necessary files to desired location, and let the shortcuts
remain as it is. After this, format the USB drive. Next, run the
System File Checker scan to the
Windows. Also run a complete scan using
Windows Defender, or any anti-virus you’re running.
4. Copy your data files back.
This should resolve the issue.