administrator old hard disk issue!

Hi Chaps,
I have an old IDE hard drive that I wanted to retrieve the data off so I used an IDE to USB cable and plugged it into my current machine. I managed to get into all of the hard disk folders such as my own music, pics etc but it won’t let me open my mums folder which is the one im after. It says access is denied. Is this because she was the only administrator on the operating system on this hard disk? I’ve gone into the properties of the drive and folder and played with numerous settings but it still won’t let me in! is their any solution at all or will it be a case of putting it into my machine as master and booting from it? I don’t really wanna have to do that so any suggestions will be appreciated.