Question about reformatting hardrive...

[blu_dvl_fn]

Before I get started, let me give you some background... A couple of years ago, I had some roommates and we all shared the same old, beat-up computer. It's a generic box somebody threw together, and my ex husband formatted and partitioned and all that jazz, then put xp on it for us. For the next six months, we used it and it was great. Then my roommates left and took it with them to their new place, and we had a lot of pictures, music, etc. on it. Over the past year they had it at their house, and it finally bit the big one a couple of weeks ago, shortly after the AV software subscription expired and they (like idiots lol) didn't bother to renew it to save some money.

My question here is this: Is there any way to recover all of those pictures and home videos and whatnot before I have it reformatted? I would like to totally have it refurbished and put vista on it, but I don't want to lose pics of my newborn son and a Mexico vacation! If I lose it, I have most of it backed up on some CD's somewhere around here, but not all... I know my ex partitioned it and there's a recovery drive (D:) on it. Perhaps I could access my files on there? I am really a novice when it comes to software... I don't know a whole lot about it. I posed all questions to my ex before, but we are no longer on speaking terms, so I don't know where to turn, and I don't want to pay an arm and a leg to have someone fix it for me. It's NTSF (whatever the heck that means), had Windows XP on it, and I want my pictures back! Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!!! :D

[RicheemxX]

First: What is the issue with the computer now or what happened to it? "It bit the big one" doesn't exactly help. If you hard drive failed then its doubtful you'll get anything off of it. If it was something else then we can work from there.

Second: If you have access to another computer you can add the drive {as a slave drive} to that computer and possibly get your pictures.

Third: A recovery partition is typically used to back up the operating system not used to back up anything else so no need even worrying about that.

Last but not least I doubt that "old beat-up" computer will play nicely with vista so I wouldn't waste the time nor the money. Xp is the way to go!!

P.S. don't spend money on AV's run AVG or AVAST both work great and are freebies!

[blu_dvl_fn]

Thanks for the quick reply!

First: I really have no idea. They told me it died and passed it off to me, but at the moment I have no idea what is wrong or what it is doing, if it is doing anything at all. They kept the cord to it for the computer they got used, so I have no way of turning the thing on. I will be hitting best buy tomorrow... I already made sure they have it in stock. I do know that when I had my ex fix it all up, when you turned it on, you got nothing. I am only assuming by what they told me that that's what it's doing now. I'm guessing at this juncture that the hard drive failed.

Second: No real access to another computer. My father has a laptop but it is his BABY and I don't think he would be okay with letting me do weird stuff with it. He'd probably have a heart attack if I did such a thing... Besides, I have no clue what a slave drive is.

Third: Oh... Yeah again I have no idea how the whole recovery drive/partition thing works. What's the point of it anyway? And could I possibly just ignore the c drive and use d? It's untouched since it was created.

Fourth: I was thinking of looking into buying more memory for it so that vista could work... I very much prefer it since for the last 3 months I have been using it on a daily basis on the laptop. It's marvelous and I love it! Of course, if it can't be done, it can't be done, but I would love to have it

Fifth: What are AVG and AVAST?