My daughter's 18 month old HP laptop Hitachi hard drive is dying, the laptop will not boot in any mode and hd error messages show up during boot attempts.  Neither HP nor Hitachi will provide any credit or replacement for the hd, 1 year standard laptop warranty covers the hd also....
I removed the hd and put it into a usb box and I was able to recover all of the  documents, mp3's, etc.  However, 95% of the jpeg's will not copy over properly.  File counts and sizes look to be the same but the jpeg's won't open in any software.
I've also tried file recovery software, same result.  Interesting enough, the files won't open on the original hd either when connected via the usb box, but the other files will.  
Are the thumb.db files an integral part of the jpeg, or only used for snapshots of the jpegs within a folder?
Is there anything unique about recovering jpegs that is preventing their recovery or even viewing on the old hd?
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On a positive note, HP still had recovery disks available for purchase for about $14 delivered which made it pretty easy to load up a new hard drive with original delivered software.  Windows updates took a while, but the laptop is working fine. 
Paul   
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