System recovery help (missing desk top folders)

Recovering from a complete harddrive failure here - managed to recover all the kids videos and all but 3 pictures...try checking: My Computer>C: > Documents and Settings (from there I have an Administrator, All Users, and My Own Folder - each with a Desktop folder in it). Hope its in one of them...good luck.
PS...I picked up a Western Digital External hard drive - it was used to recover parts of the failed disk and will now serve as a backup on the "working" computer...got it fairly cheap at WalMart - different size options also...

 

I run 4 drives, +/- 800 gig, and things like important pics are on more than one drive.  I also use Acronis True Image to keep a complete backup of my OS drive on another hard drive.
Been using Windows since 1994 and I've learned to be overly cautious with important files.
-Eric

 

I use Windows Home Server and love it.  I think I have about 2.3 TB of disk space in there.  Keep all of my important files on there and I can tell it what folder structures are important to me to replicate across multiple disks and what to keep just a single copy of.  All web based management, backs up all of my home PCs onto this single machine at night.   Also allows you to register a hostname on homeserver.com that you can go to and get remote access to your home machines via built in Terminal Services interface from anywhere on the Internet (with appropriate security and privacy controls).  It also has a web interface for a web based file server that's also Internet accessible which has been great for sending and receiving files from family members.  I set it up about 3 months ago and kick myself for not doing it a year ago.  It's been great.
--AJ

 

Posted By apjohnson on 06/02/2009 01:10 PM
I use Windows Home Server and love it.  I think I have about 2.3 TB of disk space in there.  Keep all of my important files on there and I can tell it what folder structures are important to me to replicate across multiple disks and what to keep just a single copy of.  All web based management, backs up all of my home PCs onto this single machine at night.   Also allows you to register a hostname on homeserver.com that you can go to and get remote access to your home machines via built in Terminal Services interface from anywhere on the Internet (with appropriate security and privacy controls).  It also has a web interface for a web based file server that's also Internet accessible which has been great for sending and receiving files from family members.  I set it up about 3 months ago and kick myself for not doing it a year ago.  It's been great.
--AJ
Sounds nice!
My wife won't let me play like that anymore
She's convinced we only need a single PC, and that it needs to run Vista Home Premium as it shipped with it.  No more Linux, no betas (I have the public 7 beta and may try it if I ever get time), etc.
I used to run several machines on a network along with networking the Wii (wireless), network printers, either a server or Vista Ultimate, boxes for burning, boxes for betas and a simple machine for her running XP Pro.
Actually, I really don't have the time that I used to with a son anyway.
-Eric

 

Yeah, I hear ya. I don't play much with that stuff either. I set up Windows Home Server to replace my Windows 2000 file server. It had a 500GB RAID 1 array and it was full, so I had to do something that gave me more space. Storage is cheap these days. Windows Home Server was just a logical choice. I think we are down to about 6 machines now...but that includes the Media Center that we have on our main TV and the old file server that I still have to clean some files off of. I would like to set up Windows 7. I've heard that it's beta release is already better than Vista.

--AJ