Half of my files on the external hard drive are hidden,how can I view or restore them so I can use them?

The obvious answer is to do what the other contributors have already said. However, if the data is simply not "hidden" by Windows settings, you can still recover them with EaseUS Data Recovery software. There is even a trial you can download for free. I have used the paid version many times. It works brilliantly. You cannot, however, recover the lost/hidden files to the same drive you are reading from or it could overwrite your hidden/lost files. Let the software do it's job. It takes some time to recover the raw data so be patient. Then you can restore it all to any other drive to be read and re-saved again.

You can get the free trial at http://www.easeus.com/ - choose the "DATA RECOVERY" tab at the top.

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Check your control panel and under appearance go to the advanced view settings. Select Show hidden files, folders, and drives, and then select OK.

Go to Control Panel, then press folder options, go to the "view" tab and need to press the box that says "Show hidden files, folders, and drives"