Back up and Restore-Restoring problems

I recently replaced my Hard drive. I had been backing up using Win 7 Back-up. After replacing my hard drive due due failure I have had issue restoring. I first tried to restore with the image after a while it gave me a failure error. So I the reinstalled windows with the original disks that I created when computer was purchased. I reinstalled most of my programs and was able to restore data with the back. Most of my data was restored but I am missing some information. One is my contacts in Windows live mail. Can anyone tell me where in the back up data might my contacts be and where they go. I am also sometimes having issues with windows recognizing the data on my usb hard drive. The backup data and windows backup image are there but when I run restore, advanced recovery methods, it does not find the data on the drive. It states that no back up data could be found The drive is showing. Any guidance or advice is appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help