For IT guys: Windows XP Question-HELP!!
 

OK, so I recently took a bunch of vacation snapshots and uploaded them to a laptop to edit on the flight back. They were not stored on hard drive of the laptop but on a memory stick.

So the issue is I can't find the stick.

If it turns out that it is lost, does Windows XP have any kind of tempory folder where the pics I was viewing and editing would have been stored? Any way to recover them short of finding the stick? Of course the originals are deleted from the camera.

The answer is no, XP does not keep a copy (unless you did a save to the harddrive while editing). By default Windows saves the changes you make at the original location. (meaning the stick)

oooooh... no copy?? :(

When I'm on vacation, I almost religiously copy my photos to my laptop as a backup... My dad had a horrible experience on my parent's trip to Australia earlier this year... he was using relatives computers to copy his pics from his camera storage to a Sony flash drive... and the drive crapped out with 2/3 of their pictures on it... and he had already wiped them from the camera's memory card. :(

Now SD cards are so cheap, I'd just get multiples and leave all my pictures on them, and make duplicates to the laptop.

You say you uploaded them the laptop.

Did you mean you imported them from the camera directly to a thumbdrive?

What SW did you use?

Use Control Panel - Adminitrative Tools - Computer Management

Click on Disk Manager in the left pane. Check if you can see the memory stick as a removable drive. If so, right click the removable drive in the right pane and try to assign a different drive letter (free drive letter).

It's not that the computer is not seeing the drive, he lost the physical drive, he no longer has it.

Thanks 968-

Still can't find the stick, but let me ask an additional question:

While editing, naturally I deleted some pics that I didn't like. Is there a way to recover them if I deleted them directly from the stick. Would Windows copy it into the recycle bin and then delete it? Maybe I can recover some photos from the recycle?

I know sounds like a long shot, but a long shot with crappy photos is better than no photos at all, I suppose.

No; Windows deletes it right from the stick.

If you could find the stick, you could use software to get the deleted data off it, but I guess finding the stick is the whole problem in the first place.

SlowToady is correct, when you delete a file/pics it doesn't really delete/move it, it just removes the reference to it, then as you write more info to the drive it will eventually overwrite the deleted data. So the pics will not have been moved to the trash but still be on the stick (just made it invisible)

Thanks guys. Fortunately it wasn't too many pics and there were others taking photos too. And maybe the stick will turn up yet.