As I said I bought a Western Digital External Backup Drive. It came with it's own disk and backup software. You just load it and push the button and it makes a duplicate copy of your drive. It's there. I can see it. I just don't know where to look for the deleted e-mails. What folder or progam. Where would this information normally be on the XP Operating System. James

How exactly did you back up your system? Which software did you use?

You said you had a WD external drive... but you didn't mention what software you used to create the image, which is why the question was asked :emotion-5:

I can't suggest where to look for Outlook emails - unfortunately, because I use a third-party email client (IncrediMail).

But since the WD drive has a complete image of the system, why not just backup everything currently on your system which is important to you, then use the image to restore the system back to how it was when you created the image - complete with all the emails you've subsequently deleted (how on earth did you manage to do that anyway!?)?

It should only take 15 - 20mins, and would save having to hunt down specific email files/folders :emotion-55:

If you can back up your drive, then surely there's a reverse process to put back what you backed up.

Whether it backs up everything is another issue.

You should be asking Western Digital does their software back up EVERYTHING. If not, what does it back up?

So, in short, do a restore from your backup following WD's instructions. Re-start you PC. Open up Outlook. If your email isn't there, then it is probably safe to say that your emails were not backed up.