Cannot see a particular file on an External Hard Drive- file is not hidden!

Hi folks,
I think this should be a common problem, but I couldn't seem to find an exact match to my topic in the search, so I hope you guys don't mind helping me out if this has been asked before!
Well my problem is basically stated in my subject. A few days ago, I plugged in my friends external hard drive to copy some files off of. Everything loaded fine once I plugged it in, but the problem was that the file that I needed to copy was invisible in my finder! Other files were there, and the remaining disk space indicated that it was there, but the file itself was not!
I disconnected and reconnected the HD several times but to the same problem. I tried to search for it in the HD directory, but it didn't bring up any results.
My friend confirmed that the file was not hidden, and so we plugged it into her sisters Mac Book to test it and it was there! I ended up having to copy it from the Mac Book then transferring it back to my iMac, but I'm rather concerned about this problem because I wouldn't want it happening again!
One slight problem now is that I don't have my friends HD to test any solutions at the moment, so I guess my main question is to know why does this happen/what causes this to occur? I'm think it's my iMac acting up, because it has been running a bit slower and noisier lately, so I'm thinking of reformatting my iMac? What do you guys think?
Cheers!

Hmmm, only thing that comes to mind at the moment is Permissions, Admin Rights, Groups, or HW/SW!

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