I bought it used on craigslist from a gamer young adult male in his mid 20s. I figured the profile might fit as somebody who could possibly have been into btc. I know its an ULTRA long shot, but i figured might as well. I have the technical knowhow to remove the hard drive from the laptop and plug it into my PC. But from there I'm not sure what software I would need to search the drive. I'm proficient in windows only. Sounds like Recuva is all I need?
Quite a few conditions have to be met:
* the guy should have been indeed bitcoiner
* the guy should have been keeping (holding) those coins and not be concerned enough about his coins' security
* the guy should have been honest about the state of the HDD
* obviously, nothing else has overwritten the useful wallet data
And even if you are "lucky" and find anything valuable, you should probably try to contact the guy since else you'll knowingly steal and, sooner or later, you may feel guilty if you go on that path.