Someone out there can be a hero! I was asked to wipe a HD and reinstall the Win95 operating system on a client's home PC. There were several data files which he wanted saved, so we backed them up. (No CR-RW drive, or I would have just done the whole system). Of course we discussed that ALL data would be lost, are you doubly sure we have everything? Well, right after I got the sound working after the re-install, and was packing up my tools, his wife came into the office and asked if she could get onto the computer ... there was an e-mail she wanted to look at. After I was able to pick my jaw up from the floor, I learned that she had documentation from a current legal preceeding that was sitting in her AOL mailbox, apparently was saved on the hard drive. While I feel I am in the clear for any wrong-doing, I still feel awful about this. I't would help me sleep better at night if someone has any suggestions on how to recover the data. They tried calling AOL to see if they could help. I don't know the results of that, yet. Nothing much beyond the OP system has been written to the drive, less a couple of drive files. It's a 10 gig HD. There is a good chance that much of the data area hasn't been written over. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

Dave, I really feel for you. I had a similar situation where a machine crashed on me and windows offered to fix the two FAT files. It didn't say it would remove everything. She had all her work resumes and research data on it. I tried every trick in the book. Every dos command I could muster up out of my dos help books. It took me two hours on a long distance call to calm her and get her over her first "crash". Myself, I have learned to pick myself up and don't cry over it but just put fingers to keys and start over. If there is a way I hope you find it. I wish you good luck. And if anyone else does know a way to retrieve this type of data, please I wanna know too so I have it for furture reference. And Dave I also feel you were in no way wrong, or should be faulted for this incident. You were told that there was no more personal data on the drive. If you had the opportunity to have an external cdrw and take time to go through all the folders and retrieve data, then yes you would be at fault but you were given the go ahead. I know how you feel, belive me. This girl got her computer overhauled free of charge and got all the top of the line programs. What ever program she wanted I found and installed because I felt so bad. So again Good luck to you. I'd like to know if you ever retrieve the data if you wouldn't mind.

I recently reformatted my system, after which just for grins I installed a program called Easy Recovery to see how much of the old was still there. To my surprise there was a lot still there, and I was able to recover some files. You might give a call to AOL and find out the filename the email would have been saved in then try that program. You can find a trial version here... http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecovery/ Good Luck

Jay, Thanks! Though it looks like the trial vers only tells you what you could recover...From what I read the s/w costs $179! I didn't see a "trial version link" It might be worth that to the poor woman. I've got the link now, so I can ask.

www.recover4all.com the trial version has a 10KB [per file]limit on recovery,great program

http://skyscraper.fortunecity.com/amd/887/rescue/e_index.html Drive Rescue - the hard drive discovery and emergency tool Drive Rescue is a data recovery tool for Windows(R) 95, 98, ME, NT and 2000 users. Additionally, it can be used as a disk editor. What Drive Rescue can do for you: Find any lost and deleted data on your hard disk even if the partition table is lost! Discover important file system tables of your hard disk, including paritition table, boot record, FAT and file/directory records. What Drive Rescue can NOT do for you: Find any data on a physically damaged hard disk!

Dave, If the info is still there, it'll be in the C:\America Online\Organize folder. There's probably 6 files for each screen name in there, plus a Cache subfolder. Don't worry about the Cache, just the other files. They contain all of the info about the filing cabinet, favorites list, etc. Hope this helps. Good luck. Dave Oh, I'm sure that you already know this, but others may not...Don't use the computer until you have either recovered the data or given up on it. Once it's been written over, it's gone.