Was Getting Windows 7 Worth It?

If your hard drive was screwed, chances were very good you wouldn't have been able to get that information anyway.

It depends on the degree the HD was "eff'ed up" as OP described it. I've had many many experiences with HDs I would consider "eff'ed up" from being the IT Tech guy of the family for the five or six computers around the house. Obviously, unless the HD was formatted, the stuff should still be in there under a different windows folder in drive C. Very rarely that re-installing an OS without reformatting will not solve a problem so I'd say there's a good chance his stuff is still in the HD. Since its win7, it should be in this directory: C:\Windows.old