Retrieving Files

I bought my WD hard drive for just this possibility – two days ago, I had a hard drive crash.  But I had everything backed up, so I wasn’t worried!

The hard drive has been replaced but when I went to retrieve all my files, I can only retrieve them into one “retrieved” folder.  I am self-employed and my laptop is my office, so I have literally hundreds of folders and thousands of emails, all of which were nicely organized.  PLEASE tell me that I don’t have to re-create every folder, cut and paste the content from the one folder.

Also, I use MS-Outlook and am not even entirely sure HOW to put the contents back in the right place.

I need to get back to work as soon as possible!  Help!!

Hi there, as far as I know Smartware won’t let you restore files to the original places if the computer does not have the same OS, computer name, and user name to copy the files to that layout…

You can still try to recover the files to the original places, It will try to restore the files but you won’t see them on your regular folders, instead, you’ll see a separate user folder with the files, like if you try to access someone else’s files from your C drive. You may have to manually move the files if it is done this way…

And to restore Outlook files, you’ll need to find the folder where Outlook store the physical PST files it uses or the place you decided to export them. If you never exported Outlook files then the e-mails and files could be lost. but sometimes Outlook puts the files on the Application Data folder inside your user folder… You’ll need to find the file and then select the “Import” option on Outlook.