Can't View My Documents from Enclosure

[NumberCruncher13]

I have a new laptop and I connected it to an enclosure that has my old
hard drive. When I go to windows explorer in Vista, I'm not able to
see my old "My Documents" folder, which I think was located at "C:
\Documents and Settings\My Documents". I can't even find any files
that were in that folder using "Search" on the entire drive. However,
I can see other files that were saved outside of that "My Documents"
folder.

Any ideas why this is happenning?

One thing I left out is that my old computer crashed. When I tried to
start it, the following error came up:

Error Message: Windows Could Not Start Because the Following File Is
Missing or Corrupt: \Winnt\System32\Config\Systemced

I didn't have the repair disk to fix the problem above, so I decided
that I'd just transfer my old files to my new computer. But I can't
find the main folder. Please Help! Thanks...

 

[Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM]

I have a new laptop and I connected it to an enclosure that has my old
hard drive. When I go to windows explorer in Vista, I'm not able to
see my old "My Documents" folder, which I think was located at "C:
\Documents and Settings\My Documents". I can't even find any files
that were in that folder using "Search" on the entire drive. However,
I can see other files that were saved outside of that "My Documents"
folder.

Any ideas why this is happenning?

One thing I left out is that my old computer crashed. When I tried to
start it, the following error came up:

Error Message: Windows Could Not Start Because the Following File Is
Missing or Corrupt: \Winnt\System32\Config\Systemced

I didn't have the repair disk to fix the problem above, so I decided
that I'd just transfer my old files to my new computer. But I can't
find the main folder. Please Help! Thanks...

Replace C: with whatever drive letter the old drive has now.

 

[NumberCruncher13]

Replace C: with whatever drive letter the old drive has now.

My old hard drive (in the enclosure) is connected to my notebook at
drive F. Here i'm trying to locate my old "default" my documents
folder, but i can't find that nor can i search for the thousands of
files and subfolders that were in it.

The only folders shown are the following:
All Users
All Users.WINNT
Default User
Default User.WINNT

 

[Malke]

My old hard drive (in the enclosure) is connected to my notebook at
drive F. Here i'm trying to locate my old "default" my documents
folder, but i can't find that nor can i search for the thousands of
files and subfolders that were in it.

The only folders shown are the following:
All Users
All Users.WINNT
Default User
Default User.WINNT

Sounds like you had hard drive problems and/or file system corruption and
the files are gone. Two suggestions:

1. Attach to a different computer running XP and see if that makes a
difference. If it does, grab those files! Copy them to the XP hard drive
and from there to removable media such as DVD-R.

2. If it doesn't and you didn't previously back this data up to removable
media (and now you know why that's a Good Thing), try data recovery
software on it. Here is my standard data recovery information:

*IMPORTANT* - If there is any question that the drive is at fault - it's
making noises for instance - and the data is crucial DO NOTHING FURTHER ON
THE DRIVE. Every time you spin that drive up you may be destroying data. If
this is the case, send the drive to a professional data recovery company
like Drive Savers (my preference) or Seagate Data Recovery. General prices
run from $500USD on up. Drive Savers recovered all the data on a failed
laptop drive for one of my clients and it cost $2,700. He thought it was
worth the money; only you know what your data is worth. I understand that
some insurance companies are now covering data recovery charges so check
with yours.

Drive Savers - http://www.drivesavers.com
Seagate Data Recovery Services - https://www.seagatedatarecovery.com/

*IMPORTANT* - If you think the drive is physically healthy, it may be
possible to retrieve the data by software methods. DO NOTHING FURTHER ON
THE DRIVE. The data is still on the hard drive but if you overwrite it, it
will be extremely difficult or impossible to recover it. If you use data
recovery software, install it on another machine and either use it from
that operating system or create a bootable cd/floppy and work with that. If
you don't have the skill and/or equipment to do these procedures and the
data is crucial, take the machine to a professional computer repair shop
that has experience in doing data recovery. This will not be your local
version of BigStoreUSA. In-shop data recovery is usually not exactly cheap
(for ex., my charges are generally $150-350USD), but it normally costs less
than sending the drive to a company like Drive Savers. You need to make the
determination of the value of your data and decide what to do.

PCInspector File Recovery -
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/welcome.htm
Executive Software ?Undelete? -
http://www.undelete.com/undelete/undelete.asp
R-Studio - http://www.r-tt.com/
File Scavenger - http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm
Ontrack's EasyRecovery - http://www.ontrack.com/software/

Malke

 

[NumberCruncher13]

Sounds like you had hard drive problems and/or file system corruption and
the files are gone. Two suggestions:

1. Attach to a different computer running XP and see if that makes a
difference. If it does, grab those files! Copy them to the XP hard drive
and from there to removable media such as DVD-R.

2. If it doesn't and you didn't previously back this data up to removable
media (and now you know why that's a Good Thing), try data recovery
software on it. Here is my standard data recovery information:

*IMPORTANT* - If there is any question that the drive is at fault - it's
making noises for instance - and the data is crucial DO NOTHING FURTHER ON
THE DRIVE. Every time you spin that drive up you may be destroying data. If
this is the case, send the drive to a professional data recovery company
like Drive Savers (my preference) or Seagate Data Recovery. General prices
run from $500USD on up. Drive Savers recovered all the data on a failed
laptop drive for one of my clients and it cost $2,700. He thought it was
worth the money; only you know what your data is worth. I understand that
some insurance companies are now covering data recovery charges so check
with yours.

Drive Savers -http://www.drivesavers.com
Seagate Data Recovery Services -https://www.seagatedatarecovery.com/

*IMPORTANT* - If you think the drive is physically healthy, it may be
possible to retrieve the data by software methods. DO NOTHING FURTHER ON
THE DRIVE. The data is still on the hard drive but if you overwrite it, it
will be extremely difficult or impossible to recover it. If you use data
recovery software, install it on another machine and either use it from
that operating system or create a bootable cd/floppy and work with that. If
you don't have the skill and/or equipment to do these procedures and the
data is crucial, take the machine to a professional computer repair shop
that has experience in doing data recovery. This will not be your local
version of BigStoreUSA. In-shop data recovery is usually not exactly cheap
(for ex., my charges are generally $150-350USD), but it normally costs less
than sending the drive to a company like Drive Savers. You need to make the
determination of the value of your data and decide what to do.

PCInspector File Recovery -http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/welcome.htm
Executive Software ?Undelete? -http://www.undelete.com/undelete/undelete.asp
R-Studio -http://www.r-tt.com/
File Scavenger -http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm
Ontrack's EasyRecovery -http://www.ontrack.com/software/

Malke

Malke,

Thanks for the advice. I'll try connecting the enclosure to my
friends PC tomorrow. One thing that I found odd was that when I did a
search for "*.xls" or "*.mp3", results came up, but they were found in
folders outside of that "My Documents" folder. For instance:
F:\Documents and Settings\All Users.WINNT\Documents\AOL Downloads\
F:\Program Files\Napster\

Also, the files found at these locations were pretty old (dated
between 2001 and 2004). I hope I could recover files from the past
year!

 

[Malke]

Malke,

Thanks for the advice. I'll try connecting the enclosure to my
friends PC tomorrow. One thing that I found odd was that when I did a
search for "*.xls" or "*.mp3", results came up, but they were found in
folders outside of that "My Documents" folder. For instance:
F:\Documents and Settings\All Users.WINNT\Documents\AOL Downloads\
F:\Program Files\Napster\

Also, the files found at these locations were pretty old (dated
between 2001 and 2004). I hope I could recover files from the past
year!

Certainly sounds like data corruption. If you can't see the files from your
friend's machine (and I'm going to guess that you won't), it's a data
recovery job.

After this is all over, set up and implement a backup strategy so the loss
of a hard drive like this doesn't cause you data recovery problems.

Malke