Beginning of this year my laptop of 5 years crashed and I had to reinstall Windows XP, yes XP. Anyway, long story short, I bought a Mac and was wondering if I can recover my files from the laptop. It's a HP ProBook.

It seems like when I reinstalled XP, I saved it over my old files but I was unabled to recover them. When I checked my used space vs. my free space, I notice that my old files are somewhere in this laptop. Is it possible to recover my old files (music, documents, etc.) from the old save prior in reistalling XP?

Thanks in advance.

put it in the case, connect it to a comp (mac or Pc) and take the files from there.

What I meant was, I want to recover them but I can't find them in the Local Disk (C). It seems like my laptop erased all files but I when I checked my free vs. used space, there's nothing but the new files.

It's like the new installment saved over my old but can't recover them.

Sorry if I'm not clear, this never happened to me before. Thanks though.

Do you even remember how you reinstalled XP?

It really sounds like you over-wrote those files. Not to say that they are gone forever, but data recovery is extremely expensive.

You're such pests...now, what is it you want? In your depths of your ignorance, what is it you want? Well, whatever it is you want, I can't deliver because I just don't see it. - Orson Welles


Never Tired, Always Sleepy

I was told I can recover them but didn't know it was expensive. What I had was bulk of my music, videos, and pictures.

Indeed, I was stupid because I didn't buy a external hard drive to save those into. Thanks though. If there's another way that's inexpensive, I would love to know.

Also, I don't remember how I reinstalled XP.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971760

Thanks though. Plus, it's XP-based.

Because this:

>When I checked my
>used space vs. my free space, I notice that my old files are
>somewhere in this laptop.

Doesn't seem to agree with this:

>It seems like my laptop erased all files but I when I checked my free >vs. used space, there's nothing but the new files.

If you are noticing that your used space is large enough to include all of your old files, then yeah, they are probably somewhere on the machine. If you don't see a Windows.old folder then just do a search of the C drive for one of your old files (Start in the search menu, searching local disk C folders and files for the exact name of one of your old files.)

If the used space is way too small to include your old files, then yeah, that stuff is pretty much gone for good.

to technology, I apologize. Anyway...

> If you are noticing that your used space is large enough to include all of your old files, then yeah, they are probably somewhere on the machine.

You're correct.

But

> If you don't see a Windows.old folder then just do a search of the C drive for one of your old files (Start in the search menu, searching local disk C folders and files for the exact name of one of your old files.)

I can't find my old files when I use the search on Start.

It's like, it's there but not. It's frustrating because I also searched in the hidden files. There's no way I can recover it too.

Thanks though.

and read the reviews of all the results and pick one and go for it.
A few years back I was able to recover some files from a friends computer that was in the same predicament as you are. She'd had some lame boyfriend of hers tweek with her machine even though he didn't know jack about computers beyond surfing the web...

Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the free software I used, but I was indeed able to recover most of her files.


oh...and check this out:
http://fab.com/hheb6r





http://fluidj.tumblr.com/
http://obamalookingcool.tumblr.com/

and if it's available on your PC right now then you can open it from the app. this is not a recovery tool, just helps you determine where your space is going.

--sig--
n/a