A Victorian woman got more than she bargained for when she bought a new laptop and hard drive from a Harvey Norman store in Melbourne's north-east.

Barbara Cumming, 36, was confronted with thousands of images of strangers, including a naked buck's night photo and a woman giving birth, Fairfax reports.

She had hoped the branch at Greensborough Plaza could restore files from a broken laptop, but the new hard-drive instead contained around 131,000 photos that didn't belong to her.

Other photos reportedly include a baby being washed and, a nude woman on a bed and a child blowing out candles.

Harvey Norman is investigating how the files came to be on the new hard drive, but a spokesman said it could be human error.

Meanwhile, Ms Cumming is considering complaining to the federal Privacy Commission, Fairfax reports.

"There is a little boy in some of the photos - as parents you do take photos of your children running around the nudie," she said.

"I'm an innocent person but there are non-innocent people out there who, if they got hold of that photo, would have a field day."