My hard drive failed and had to get new laptop and downloaded Em client (was using free Emclient version) Tried to figure out how to login and retrieve my acct. Only thing I could do was Add Acct? It does pull some old emails, but none of my settings, contacts, singantueres, etc are there. How do I just retrieve my original acct on a new device? I was using the free version. Thanks for any help.
Items like settings, signatures etc. are stored locally and not synced with your server.
Contacts and Calendars can be either local or synced depending on what your server supports and how your account was setup in eM Client.
Emails are stored locally if using POP3, or if you moved them to Local Folders. If using IMAP they are synced with your server.
Anything stored locally will only be on your old hard disk, and if that is unusable then they are most likely lost unless you have a backup stored elsewhere.
However, if she has a backup saved on the bad drive (there must be one already), and if it is operational enough to use as a slave drive in, or attached to the new laptop with a SATA to USB connector, she could copy the backup over to the new computer drive and then do a restore from within eM Client to get everything back. That is, if the drive is a mechanical one, not SSD, sometimes it will work long enough to be used as a slave drive to retrieve data.
I understand this might not be workable, but if the two “ifs” are possible, then getting all her data back is possible, too. If she doesn’t know how to go about this, asking a computer savvy friend might be something to consider.
When I built my new computer I did a backup of eM Client from the old one and a restore to my new one to get all my settings, emails and folders created again.
Does eM Client do any automatic backups? That would be a nice feature, as most users don’t think about this until it’s too late.
By default, the automatic backup is not enabled.
That’s unfortunate for those who don’t know about it. Now I have to look to see if I have it set on my computer… 
Update: Awe, in version 7 I found it under Menu>Tools>Settings>General>Backup
Ticked the box to enable backups every two weeks. Thanks Gary.
Thanks, I think I can probably recover some emails, but sounds like I am out of luck on contacts and other settings. I will pay more attention this time.
As mustangace said, it is possible to recover data from the old disk. If that data is important most computer repair places can do that for you. You will need to get the *C:\Users* _ username _ \AppData\Roaming\eM Client directory and all it’s subdirectories.