My DD had all her taxes for past years on a harddrive (in a rarely used back-up computer) which unfortunately got corrupted when she installed an AV this year. In spite of having me for a mother, she had failed to back up ANY her tax files to either external media or a paper copy. :-(
She called me in desperation, because I have been known to poke around in my computer's guts, and hoped maybe I could work a little magic. I pulled together some hardware and software, and went over there Friday. Nothing I could do forced the drive to boot, and putting it into an external enclosure so we could see if the files were available from her good computer failed. Her new computer runs MS2000 or Vista and since I'm not familiar with either one, I was reluctant to mess around with it.
So I brought the corrupt drive here, to see if I could rescue her files. However although, using Partition Magic, I could actually "see" the drive I could not force it to give up the goods. My brother is having a similar problem at the moment, and someone at work gave him two Linux boot disks, with the hope that he would be able to retrieve his data using Linux. He was not able to boot into either Linux OS, so he gave the disks to me with a few encouraging words. I have never used Linux, but thought I had nothing to lose, and much to gain...
Miracle of miracles, I booted to one of the CDs running Linux, and up came a lovely screen with a bunch of stuff I didn't understand, but after a whole bunch of clicking around, it opened a window where I discovered a drive tree, and letters which looked like my DD's drive (plugged in to my computer in an external USB enclosure). So I plugged my USB floppy drive in and another drive name came up. Whoo Hoo!
After much exploring (they were deep in several layers of folders), I finally found her tax files, as well as the .pdf files of same, and copied them to the floppy disk. I have now booted back into XP and fired up TT, and guess what? It was able to import DD's prior year tax information from the floppy! Yay!!! She was worried she would have to file for an extension, now she should be able to complete her returns in plenty of time.
I'm going to take the hard copies I printed of her '08 and '09 tax returns, along with the floppy disk and external floppy drive to her tomorrow at the hospital where she works. She owes me dinner at Olive Garden. ;-)