Backuped files disappeared

My laptop hard-disk died and I tried to restore all my data off of our Linksys network backup drive using my wife's laptop which is the same as my laptop. Starting in October 2009 I started using Vista's backup system. I had it backup any changed data files every night. I noticed once, this past spring, that I could not see any of these files in my explorer browser so I tested the Vista Backup system by restoring a couple of old files. I was able to restore the files and felt confident. I suppose I should have tried restoring the files from my wife's computer. I say this because this is what I have been trying to do since my laptop died last week, but with no success. The Backup and Restore function does not see any backup files by Vista when I tell the system I am using a different computer (In addition, I have tried this using my daughter's laptop, which is a different make of computer than ours). I have also discovered, to my horror, that this is a problem that others have encountered, even with their original computer that has be up-graded with a new hard disk. However, I have combed through their threads and have not found a fix that works for me. The only hint that my data is on my network backup disk is a folder called "Owner-pc" which was the name of my laptop. I cannot access the directory, it is locked and the properties tells me it is empty. I was able to restore my data back to the last time I used my PC-Backup program by Stompsoft, which was Oct 03, 2009. However, all the data since that date, which was backed up using Vista, is missing.