USB HDD recovery problem

[Dave109]

Hey,

A while ago, my old laptop (IBM R40) died due to motherboard failure. I recently pulled the hard disk and put it in an external USB case so that I could recover my files. The problem is that I cannot access all files and folders. The root drive shows up when I plug it into a USB 2.0 connection, and I can access some of the folders. However, when I try to get into others, most importantly the 'documents and settings' folders for specific users, access is denied. It's as though the windows password protection is still in place, however it does not prompt me for a username/password. I'm running XP Pro. Any ideas on how I can access my old files?

thanks,
dave

 

[fishmahn]

Try taking ownership of those files/folders and see if that helps.

Mike.

 

[Dave109]

Thanks! I couldn't take ownership at first because I couldn't see the 'security' tap in the disk properties. It's because I forgot to disable 'simple file sharing' on my new machine. It's all sorted now.