One thing that is often missunderstood is that gravel under soil does not help prevent soil from approaching saturation. What it does do is allow a place for water to go once the soil is completely saturated. It actually serves as an interution to capillary movement of water through soil until that soil's voids are so full of water that it comes into the gravel. What you should have done was to have pitched the terraces slightly so that the water landing on them could runoff. This is usually done toward the wall on the lower side. Each wall should have gravel all theway up to the top of it right behind in that goes all the way to the bottom where a perforated pipe that is pitched to carry away the water should be. Gravel open to the surface accepts the runoff and gravity lets it work its way down to the bottom of the gravel until it meets the subgrade (soil under the gravel). Then it begins to fill up the gravel with water from the bottom up until it gets to the height of the holes in the pervious pipe. Then it enters the holes and starts flowing down the channel between the two rows of holes in the PVC piping until it comes out the other end or until it reaches a dry area in the gravel surrounding the pipe if there is more water in the pipe than the channel between the rows of holes can hold. Then it leaks out of the holes which is perfectly OK. If the gravel behind the wall is not open to the suface for water to enter, it will only get the water that the soil is ready to give up. It won't give it up until it is saturated. Water only moves through soil by gravity once it is saturated. That means that if you isolate a soil over gravel, it will keep it until it gets completely saturated or until it dries out from the surface. In other words, subsoil drainage does nothing until the soil is saturated and does nothing to prevent it from becoming saturated.

I think it's over becaue I think I did something while looking for it that rewrote it. I what Exgm said and found out that the "Default" file is the "Public" folder under "Users" and I did find the file that says it is a "Copy" of the one I was looking for, but when I opened it it is the empty database so I think I must have tried opening it again and it reverted back to its original form or something. I dunno, I didn't open it righ away but might have done so under the tuteledge of the techie at work, since we couldn't find it. Anyway, the file path was C:\Users\Public\Documents if anyone else has this problem. Not sure why that didn't show up in a search though. I searched for ANY file on the C drive that had been altered today before I did anything else. I also tried to look in Google docs but I don't really get how to search that. I don't think I used that, I think I would have realized that. But I did try what Exgm said, and if I open a sample downloaded .xls file without saving it and then opening it, it DOES just go about saving it into this default file. Don't know WHY that folder does not show up on a search though. If it had showed up with the search I would have seen it since I searched for ANY xls file. At this point I've spent almost as much time on this as I did creating the file so I have to give up. I think it is hopeless anyway Somehow I must have rewritten the file thanks to the "help" from our techie. Or else it was just long gone anyway, since it seems like a search would have turned it up. I'm very suspect of this whole search function now.

Thanks, we tried Recuva (thanks Randy), but couldn't figure out how to run it. Luckily, he called a fellow photographer who led him to a free utility Digital Image Recovery, which worked. His friend talked him through it and it brought back so many old pictures he couldn't believe. He had pics he deleted from last year reappear. He was deleting a bunch of pictures and accidently deleted one, which was in the string he wanted to get rid of. I guess that proves that nothing deleted, is really gone. Thanks again, Jane

E-mail was originally designed to be downloaded OFF the server and permanently-stored local on the user's computer. That's what a mail client program does via the POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) protocol. Users wouldn't leave mail "permanently" on the server any more than postal mail would be left at the US Post Office. The e-mail server (and the Post Office) are to be considered as temporary storage, holding the data until the user downloads / brings his mail home. Web-based e-mail is a relatively new thing and removes the user from full control over what happens to the data. IMO it's also a security risk. Leaving mail on the server makes it vulnerable to hackers. Anyone who hacks a server gets access to the data on it. GMail, Yahoo, HotMail, etc. servers are much more likely to get hacked than a user's personal computer.