Laptop Died Need to access hard drive

[traumattic]

My HP laptop won't turn on suddenly and I have all my business info on it. I bought a 2.5 sata hard drive enclosure to hook up the drive to my desktop and everything went fine. The drive shows up as F drive but when I open it there is nothing there. Looking at its specs the drive appears full but was only half full on my laptop? Any idea how I can get to my information? HELPPPP!

[ChrisXPPro]

No ideas right now but - I have had similar problems with 2 drives from my old primary system .. lot of helpful suggestions were given but so far no resolution.

Could be worth you reading the thread in case any of it can help you.

http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php?topic=60714

[traumattic]

Lol. Actually I read that whole thread before posting! Your drive wasn't assigned a drive letter though was it? My computer is identifying it as F and I can access it from "my computer" in windows but it appears blank despite reading as full. Can it only be access if I name it "C" drive? What would happen to my desktop if I tried to do that?

[ChrisXPPro]

Ah - wondered if you'd seen that!

Still no useful ideas but I'd check with diskpart perhaps and also let us see a screen grab from 'Disk management' ...... compare the graphic lower display with text version above.

Does it show ''healthy active'' and tell what file system?

I feel your pain!

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Assuming desktop already has a C drive then you can't use that - shouldn't even be available ----- what is concerning is you actually have a drive letter but see zilch it seems!  Hope someone else might feel inspired.

[traumattic]

Plugged the drive into my wife's desktop and it read the drive and all the information is there THANK GOD!!!!
How do I access the programs and files. Should everything work right off the drive or does the original program have to be installed on her computer first?
Also, how do I access all of my folders in my email program? I opened outlook from the external drive but I took me to my wifes stuff.
I have lots of saved emails I really need.

[drmsucks]

Doubtful that your programs will work. If you have to have a certain program, install it onto your wife's machine - you can always delete it once you get squared away.

You can access your files as if they were on the original computer - copy them, open them (assuming that you try to open them on a computer that has the host program), delete them, etc.

As for OE emails - verify this because I use Thunderbird - but, I think that you can simply import them into your wife's OE. Not sure what happens to her stuff but suspect that you will have all emails in the one account. Maybe the best thing to do is to create a new user acct and use OE to import there; then, your wife's account will stay "clean."

Good luck!