Old HD?

[Peerzy]

I have a very old 40GB IDE HDD that was used in a Windows XP build about 7-8 years ago.

I've connected it up to my current PC as a slave drive and can see all three partitions but for some reasons it won't give me access to the 'My Documents' bit of a user on the drive. Vista pops up saying I don't have premissions to view this folder. I can get into everything else just not anything in Z:\Documents & Settings\USERNAME\* such as Desktop, My Pictures etc....

I tried unplugging my SATA Vista HDD and trying to boot from the 40GB IDE but it just gets past the BIOS screen and before any sort of Windows loading screen appears it restarts so no luck - from what I can remember the Windows install is ruined anyway.

It's not asked me for a password or anything and even if it did I'd have no idea what my password was 7-8 years ago.

I tried CMD but gave me access denied.

I just basically need to access and copy everything off of the HDD and have a look through it.

Any ideas?

Thanks

*Edit* - Just realised this should have been put into Software as I'm assuming there will be a program to remove the premission problems instead of it being a Hardware issue.

 

[Peerzy]

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...ership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/

Install this and take ownership. You can do it without this but its an easier way to do it.

Brilliant - just what I was after! I'll let you know how I get on.

 

[Peerzy]

No probs.

I use it all the time when doing data recovery from goosed but readable drives.

The reason you cant get access is that you originally marked the my Docs folder as private.

Cheers, worked perfectly and I've got everything off the drive I need now.

To save making another thread as this is a pretty big long shot. A friend has some sort of Mac laptop (outside of the 12 month warrenty but reasonably new and good spec) and it won't boot anymore. She's tried reinstalling the OS etc and apparently it gives a 'Wheel of death' or something.

Are Mac HDD's like standard Windows laptop HDD's - basically will I be able to rip it out of her laptop, find someway of connecting it to my desktop and copy all her data off. She doesn't care about the laptop but apparently it's got a lot of uni work and stuff that's not backed up.