Can find pix on pulled HDD, but not documents

denno

New member
Greetings
My old laptop has been wonky for some time, and I have bought a new one and have been getting it set up. The latest stuff on the old one, for a few months, is not backed up. Today it would not start.
As I have done once before, I removed the hard drive from the old computer and plugged it into the new one by USB. [Everything says buy an enclosure; I just have a wire that has USB on one end and whatever-it-is that plugs into the hard drive at the other.]

The only one of what I think Windows is pleased to call "libraries" is Pictures. My pictures are there. But no Documents. In fact, in folders-within-folders, there were even some documents under Pictures; but I don't see them now.
I have looked in Users, but there doesn't seem to be anything there.

I want to recover documents and some videos as well as the pictures.

Why (oh why) can't I just see them where they usually are?

Messing around with Recuva; don't know what I'm getting there....

They are both Dell laptops with Win 10.

Thanks,
denno
 

denno

New member
Hi
In the three days since I submitted this post, I found my answer: boot up to the old HDD.

Regards,
denno
 

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
I don't think this was ever really a data recovery question which is probably why no one answered it. You just didn't know how to find where you'd saved your data. Most of us are too busy to explain something that can be resolved by a simple search in explorer.
 

denno

New member
Irks me, too, to have to answer people who apparently did not read my question.
Or my update: nobody answered because the question was only vetted by admin and posted yesterday.

Cheers,
denno
 

denno

New member
Y'know, I gotta spell it out, though it's likely a waste of my equally valuable time.
The first reply to my request for help essentially told me I was wasting the time of the people on this forum, although my post had explained how a "simple search on explorer" had not worked, and I was asking for help in whatever an explanation or next step might be, from people who know more about it than I do.
His(?) second point was that probably no one had bothered to answer for three days because they considered the question beneath their attention, because I should have known how to find the file myself. As I had indicated plainly, my post had had no replies for 3 days because it had taken that long for the vetting process to allow it to be posted. (Yes, I was being snide.)

When I responded to the effect that my own time was being wasted by people who did not read carefully and who responded to what they incorrectly assumed my post had said, the next person up said I was ungrateful for the free consultation by knowledgeable people and suggested I go away.

Maybe this wasn't what you folks call a "data recovery problem." So what? It's where I was led in trying to frame the help question on Google. If you could tell me how to solve it, why not do so? If you thought I was in the wrong place, you might have suggested a better one. Instead, the first response insulted my intelligence and said my question was not worth answering (other than to insult my intelligence.) The second response was rude to me about my pointing out that the first responder had not read my posts carefully and did not understand me, leading him to insult my intelligence and my thoughtlessness in asking a stupid question, for which I was not properly grateful.

While I was waiting 3 days to get my question posted, I got to CNET, where a couple of people engaged with me and made suggestions. None of those was exactly right, but the discussion got my brain turning over until I figured it out myself.

It's a matter of attitude.

Is this as insular and rude an environment as it appears? Genuine question.
 

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
No one insulted your intelligence. That's just your oversensitive nature. All I said was no one had answered because it wasn't really a data recovery issue. The fact that you were able to see the data after booting from the drive only confirms that point.

We can't magically know for you where you saved files, so we had nothing to offer you. A simple search for *.doc or *.docx would have revealed all such files on the drive and you could have found where your files were.

You are on a professional data recovery forum. Most of the members here are discussing hardware level recoveries in clean rooms and using tools like PC-3000. A question like yours is more of a Tom's Hardware question. It was no insult to you, we just are too busy to be googling answers to basic computer stuff for people. This isn't the forum for that.

if you were to go on a brain surgeons forum and start asking questions about what cold syrup to take they'd probably tell you to effectively get lost too. It's not an insult, you're just in the wrong place.
 

denno

New member
Well, we'll let it ride in neutral. Thank you for your reply

For the record, in case I didn't spell it out
I had the pulled HDD plugged into the new laptop by USB
Explorer showed the contents as what you see under the C drive: Users, Program files, that stuff. (Going to Users did not produce a further path.) Searching for specific file names did not work. What was missing was what you see normally under This Computer: Desktop, Documents, Pictures and so forth.
When I instead booted the USB drive, I could see what I used to see when it was in its own laptop. Conversely, while the old HDD was booted, the one installed in the new laptop showed the rudimentary version.
I still don't know why that was; or what other steps might have made both show their contents normally at the same time; just found a patchwork way to copy my files over.
 

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
It's probably just your Windows security policy hiding other user folders. Be sure you are logged in as an Admin, enable viewing of hidden folders, and I bet you'll see your data is all there.
 
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