How can I recover my lost pictures after my hard drive failed?

[Kandace Northrup]

I have an MSN email account. Back in September I emailed several pictures to a friend of mine, but they never got there. They have been sitting in my outbox. Recently my hard drive broke and I lost all of my pictures. I am trying to retrieve whatever I can from my blogs, etc. The email I sent has some pictures of a trip that I would like to get back somehow, but haven't figured out how I can except in a small thumbnail. Is there anyway to get them back their original size?

Thanks in advance,
Kandace

 

[popowich]

Hi Kandace,

Which mail program are you using to send your e-mail? You mentioned MSN, but also having a stuck outbox which sounds more like an Outlook Express issue. If you are using the MSN webmail have you checked your sent items folder? Pictures attached to email in the sent items folder are viewable at the original size.

Did you upload any of the pictures to web sites such as MySpace or Facebook? Do you use any online photo album sites that may have some of the originals?

I understand it may be too late, but now is a good time to add an external hard drive, internet backup, CDRW, or other backup option to your computer so you can backup the files that are important to you and not have a repeat of this problem.

What exactly happened when your hard drive broke? Did Windows get reinstalled? Did you put in a new hard drive? The less you do on the computer and the more details you can give the better the chance that some of the files can be recovered. Big Dan is more of a Windows expert than I am, so I hope he has some good recommendations for you about programs that you can download that will help you to recover the lost files.

 

[Big Dan]

As Ray said it's hard to say exactly if your pictures can be brought back. If you're using MSN as your ISP and therefore using their desktop client some of your mail is stored on your hard drive. I would guess the outbox is stored on your hard drive because the web mail interface does not have an out box, email is either a draft or sent immediately.

Can you try logging into to your account at hotmail.com and looking at your sent items?