Please help! I can't access files on a network drive.

Guys, I'm screwed. I took all the pictures we had taken for our christmas cards and placed them on a portable hard drive that is connected directly to our router as a network drive. I put them in their own folder. All of the files are in CR2 format. The theory was to put them there so everyone can access them and they would be backed up.

Today I went to view them and even though all the files are there, even though I each one is 16mb or so in size, I cannot access them. I have been able to open 3 out of the 60 we took. When I try to open them I get an error saying the file has been moved or deleted, but it is still right there. When I try to move them to a local drive I get an error that the file is no longer located there.

But they are clearly right there. I don't know as much about computers as I once did, but I am in the dog house and I need some help. Is there anyway to access these photos, or am I up S&%T creek without a paddle?

Thanks in advance.

As Aaron Rogers said earlier in the football year: "RELAX". All is not lost at this point. Here is what I would do, remove the USB drive from the router and connect it locally to a computer (be sure to reboot the computer before connecting the USB drive...that way we know we are working from a clean slate).

Once you have booted up the computer and attached the USB drive, see if you can browse the USB device and try to copy your files to a local drive on your computer. Only do a few at a time to make sure it works. Let us know if this helped at all.

You have to make sure that the router is set up correct for the USB drive. The problem when connecting USB drives to routers that allow to be used for Network sharing of those drives. The drive goes to sleep after so long, and then the router no longer sees the drive, so due to the person that wrote the software, never thought about what to do in that kind of case.