[Hokieman]

Greg, recovering the Outlook email isn't hard at all once you can get into the drive. Vista may be a little different than XP but it should be close enough to not matter.

Look in the folder setup under the tools dropdown and check the box in Folder Options View tab to show hidden files.

Then go to to your documents & settings/your user name/local settings/application data/microsoft/outlook directory and look for a file with a pst suffix (the default is outlook.pst). If you were already using personal folders, find the pst files whereever you stashed them and move those as well.

Create a new directory on the hard drive( I call mine Email-Yeah, I know thats really original) and copy the pst file there. You could just overwrite the one on the new drive in the outlook save directory if you want but I wouldn't advise that just in case something goes wrong. Not likely but it could.

Then go into outlook on the new machine and create a personal folder and point it to the pst file(s). Just follow the directions in the email account setup to set up the personal folder (name it whatever you like). Everything should show up and you can move emails between the email save folders as you like.

I do it every once in a while so that the wifes email is on her computer and mine is on mine (we share 1 email account and whoever gets there first downloads it all).

When you're done, just go back and make the hidden files hidden again if you want to but you don't have to.