Dead laptop - data recovery from laptop disk

[Neill_J]

Hi

Got a problem with Girlfriends laptop...
Basically over the last few weeks it has been erratically shutting down and sometimes not starting up at all when powered on, it has now got to the point where it doesn’t even switch on at all anymore (no beeps - nothing).
We have ordered a new laptop (old one is really crap now anyway so not worth the repair), but need to recover the data from the old laptop, to this end I purchased a sharkoon disk adaptor from ocuk.

When plugging in the 2.5 IDE from the laptop, it shows up and is detected but browsing through the disk we cannot find the my documents folder where all her data/music etc is.
The original laptop was purchased from a well known high street retailer and under documents and settings there is a user by that name.
I suspect she has always been logging on under that name without realising it (auto logon probably).

The users shown under documents and settings are - All users, default user, ****** (cant say who - forum rules), guest, local service, network service

The problem now though is if I try to click on the user ****** above to browse the contents of the folder I get an error:

I:\Documents and Settings\****** is not accessible.

Access is denied.

Ok

I think this is either a security/permissions thing or encryption, wondering if there is anyway to get into this folder anyone can suggest?

Side point - Girlfriend thought she had 2 disks on the laptop - looked under disk management for partition information but all I can see is one disk with a single partition.
Is it possible one partition (with her data) is not showing?

Thanks for any help or ideas!

Neill

 

[Jumping]

Take ownership of the files and folder on the laptop hard drive.

 

[bledd]

it will all be in that 'username' folder

google 'take ownership of a folder' and use the microsoft link, it's not hard to do, but you wouldn't know where to look if you've not done it before

 

[Neill_J]

Those tips did the trick, thanks all

Neill

 

[errata]

extra partitions might have been recover or other backup partitions, usually standard format but the oem may have formatted them in a non standard way that required a driver or utility to open them and run a reinstall routine.

if the new pc cant see them it probably does not have the utility or driver installed.

Have a look to see how much capacity might be missing from the reported vs the models theortical size.