Try hooking the drive up using a different USB port if you use the same one all of the time; some times it will find it again, and everything will be fine. Once you find it, open my computer to look for the drive icon. What you need to do is make the my computer window smaller - then click the drive icon and drag it to your desktop. This will give you a new link for it and save you having to go to my computer all of the time. I would back the drive up. I've had 2 externals go bad on me, I don't use them for staorage any more. If your computer will take another hard drive, consider getting one and running everything from there. The only time I use an external drive is to back up a computer I am working on. I don't trust them any more.

The documents and pictures are (mostly) still there. When something is deleted, all that really occurs is that the first letter of the file name is dropped and the file becomes "invisible." You should be able to recover most or all of the files with the right software. However, if you keep using your computer, you stand a good chance of over-writing the files because the space they occupy is "free space" as far as the computer is concerned. My advice: use another computer and do a Google search for "recover deleted files" to find some software that works for you. It's been several year since I've had to hunt for deleted files, so I'm not up-to-date on what's out there. If possible, install the software you select on the new drive so that you don't over-write more accidentally deleted files when you install the new software.

More memory is good but at some point there is a diminishing return on the investment and that point is a function of what you are doing with your computer. Things like first person shooter games, video editing, photo editing (of very large files) all benefit from lots of memory. Writing an email to Aunt Betty doesn't require very much memory at all because the computer can process information far faster than you can type. Same thing for the Internet, your computer can render pages faster than your connection can supply the information. So if you have a slow internet connection, you're not likely to experience much, if any improvement. With that said, 4 gigs is probably a pretty good number. If you really want a WOW factor, get a solid state drive and use that for your O/S and critical applications. To try and answer some of your questions: - Windows doesn't care about the physical drive or any logical partitions. It does make good sense to install Windows 7 on the newer, faster drive. You'll get the best performance that way. When it comes time to get rid of XP, everything will be on one drive and that, if nothing else, should help you keep things mentally organized. - My understanding is that you have two physical drives, one with a functioning version of XP and the other blank. If that is not correct, say so NOW. - When you go to install Windows 7, it will recognize that there is another operating system (Windows XP) already installed. Windows 7 won't do anything to XP other than to set up the dual boot. Essentially it's computer language that says, "XP is there, Windows 7 is here, which one do you want to use?" - Logical partitions to a drive a largely a function of personal preference. Understand that it is more difficult (but not impossible) to non-destructively repartition a drive after you put data on it. If you, for example, have a partition for music, another for videos, and a third for pictures and find down the road that you have a lot more videos than music, it becomes more difficult to rearrange things. My suggestion is a single, large partition and use folders to organize your data.

This happened to me 5 months ago. Everything lost. New computer also. I sent my hard drive to California to a co. called Drive Savers ( i think). They first look over the drive to see if anything is recoverable, if not they don't charge anything. if there are recoverable files it can be anywhere from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars to recover. My drive turned out to be shot, nothing recoverable. Thousands of pics lost. I would have paid to have them back. But we did have a limit we would have gone to. Pictures are almost priceless. Thankfully I had downloaded many to Photobucket & had many of them on DH's compute as well. Good luck, I feel for you for sure. It is a sinking feeling to see that blank , blue screen.