Stupid question from stupid do it yourselfer

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Recently my laptop died on me. Said hard drive fried basically. Having a lot of pictures and videos on the computer i was pretty irritated. But I needed the laptop. So I tried to reboot my laptop. Originally it was Vista. I only had XP reboot disk but I tried it anyway. Everything worked fine except now the laptop has no space whatsoever. It seems to me that Vista was not deleted and all the vista folders are still there. Does this mean pictures and videos might still be on the hard drive as well? If so how to I get to them (nothing is showing up since computer is running new XP?) And if the info is lost forever, how do I erase everything off the hard drive? I dont know much about computers but I try things to see if they work.

 

Ideally, you'd want to try to access the drive from another computer using an enclosure or drive dock. See this thread on data recovery software: http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/765012-best-data-recovery-program.html. Also, as Pirx said in that thread, if the drive is toast, you're unlikely to get any data off of it. If the drive is really toast, just physically destroy it and your data is safe.

 

Thank you very much for the link. Looks like more work to do. Im hoping I can still get the data off the drive. 4 years of memories on it. The Mrs. is not very happy. Again thank you.

 

Well, depending on how much they're worth, you could look for a data recovery service in your are, but it'll be expensive. If anything, you may want to invest into a backup solution, either a simple external hard drive where you copy things manually, an external + software that makes periodic backups, cloud backup or all of the above.

 

Wait, so you installed XP on the original hard drive and it's now working?

If so click on Start button then right click Computer, then left click Manage. Then click Storage and then Disk Management. Is the Vista Partition still there and what does it say in the box? (Apologies if this process is different in Vista, I have never had a PC with that OS on).

You might also want to try booting from a Linux Live CD/USB, I have had a lot more success retrieving corrupted data using Linux than Windows for reasons completely unknown to me!

 

so the drive is working normally now (the same drive you thought was fried?) Then you are in great luck, you should be able to browse your old folder. If you go to folder options check show hidden folders and system files. Now in xp it used to be in something like c:\documents and settings\"your username", in vista and 7 it's in the c:\users\"whatever your username "\. I would browse those folders. Possible for security reasons you may not be able to browse those vista folders.

 

I'm not sure you can access disk management that way under XP (it's been way too long since I used it). It is however accessible through control panel.

Now, re-reading the thread, a few questions to the OP.

One: If I understand correctly, you had vista and you reinstalled XP over this, is that correct?
Two: You say that there is no space on the drive, do you mean that the drive is at full capacity or the capacity show is lower than what it should be?
Three: Do you have a Windows.old folder on your hard drive?

 

do a search for Windows.old folder. whenever an OS is changed and its not a total clean install the folder from your previous OS is on the hard drive somewhere and usually has all your documents and settings in there.

 

If the photos are important, I'd just pull out the drive with the photos on them. Buy a new drive and install vista or windows 7(on the new drive). If you install it with the same username/password you should easily be able to browse the old user folder with your info. Now get a usb to sata converter and hot plug it and you'll see your old drive contents. You should be able to browse it. There are easier and cheaper ways but if the photos are worth more than $60 to you I'd just get a new drive for the OS and a usb to sata converter for the old drive.