Retrieving data

[Magsmom]

I recently experienced my first ever hard drive crash. I had been backing up
my documents folder to an external hard drive. Since my desktop pc was more
than 7 years old, I decided to buy a new laptop. My old PC was XP Home, and
my new laptop was Vista. SP3After restoring my XP OS, I installed my outlook
2003 on my laptop, but I was unable to access the data files on my external
hard drive. How can I make reliable back up copies of my data files on the
external hard drive that are accessible?

 

[DL]

You allready have a similar thread in the Offfice group, but now you give
more info.
You mention a new Laptop then go on to say you restored winxp, to which PC?
and was this a new hard disk?
By default outlook data files are not stored in My Docs, so;
Unless you moved your outlook data files to the My Docs location, or used
the Outlook Backup add-in from MS to backup data to My Docs, the outlook
data maybe lost
The data resides within the Documents & Settings grouping of your old PC

You further stated in your other post that 'Vista rejected my Office
program' this makes no sense since you have apparently installed Outlook
2003