Re: Old Hard Drive has restricted files

"Eveline" <Eveline@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0A402FA6-0105-4541-91A4-DAED74912D2B@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello Patrick,

I tried to take ownership over the folders but it will not work.

Does it give you error messages - access denied, for example - or are the
folders empty? If you've done it correctly you should get no access
denied messages.

Both hard drives only have Windows XP Home edition on it and I did not
encrypt any files, just password protected my account.

Oh good. That's a relief.

Would it make any difference if I mount my old hard drive internally into
the new computer?

Functionally, no. Data transfers will be faster, yes. It won't make a lot
of difference if it's USB2, and if the new machine is actually new, it
almost certainly is.

Will this recovery tool work with my old hard drive even though it is only
attached with the usb?

Yes, it will just take longer. If it's on a USB2 port, just leave it where
it is.

One other thing you might try is taking an image of the old drive, mounting
it, and exploring the files from the image.

Go to http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

and download the free trial (full-feature, for 2 weeks or so, and worth
purchasing).

install the trial, and back up the old drive to a spot on your new drive.
Once it's done, tell TrueImage to mount the image - it will give it a drive
letter. You can now explore all the files on the image without having to
worry about overwriting anything on the old drive. When you find the files
you're looking for, you can simply drag and drop them to a new location.

To help you search for them, I suggest this excellent free search utility,
Agent Ransack:

http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

It's extremely faster than the XP search utility. Once you have the drive
image created and mounted and Ransack installed, open any explorer window,
right-click on the new drive letter and choose Agent Ransack from the popup
menu. Enter a filename that you know you are looking for, and click Search.

If you can't find the files this way, proceed to the r-studio demo.

HTH
-pk

Thanks
Eveline

"Patrick Keenan" wrote:

"Eveline" <Eveline@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3C20650A-37D0-435D-9F1C-7C326D48F4C1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello Ted

Thank for replying.
It does not solve my problem. I hooked the old hard drive back up and
I
did
a search for the picutres and documents I need but they are not there.
The
folders under the account Eveline seem to be empty. I have no idea
where
all
my files are. Is there a way to boot or run windows on the old hard
drive
so
I can access my account ?
I can access 12.5 MB of the 33MB that are used. I am not sure where
the
other 18.5 MB are.
I tried accessing the drive via the MS-Dos but get the same Access
denied.
Any Idea?

First, don't write anything else to that drive. If files were deleted
or
marked as deleted, you increase the risk of them being overwritten and
rendered unrecoverable. So, it's probably best if you don't try to
set it
up to boot from it.

If the drive is formatted as NTFS (and it sounds like it) you cannot
access
it by a DOS boot, unless you use special 3rd party drivers. You have
to
use XP or another NT system. If you're using the command prompt
within
XP - that isn't DOS, it's XP without the visuals.

Was your old system XP Pro, and if so, did you encrypt any of the files
or
folders (XP Home does not have this function built in)? This is not
the
same as having a password on the account. If you did encrypt them, and
you
didn't back up the account credentials, they are for all practical
purposes
gone.

If you didn't encrypt the files, depending on what happened to the disk,
they may be recoverable.

As described in other posts, you should be able to simply take ownership
of
the files and folders and recover them. You might need a bit of
assistance in setting the permissions for this, but it normally works.

In worse cases, you may need to use data recovery tools, like R-Studio:
http://www.data-recovery-software.net/

They have a demo, which will list what it can recover, so you can have a
very good idea of what the situation is before you purchase it. Note
that
this listing can take *hours* to complete. The demo version does allow
you
to save the listing, so if it looks like it's what you need, save the
listing, call them for the working version, and open the saved list.
Then
you can proceed to take back the files you need. While not a speed
demon,
this can work *very* well.

Past that, you're looking at data recovery services. When I've had to
use
these services, prices have ranged from $1000 to $5000 Canadian.

HTH
-pk


Thanks
Eveline
"Ted Zieglar" wrote:

""Access is Denied" Error Message When You Try to Open a Folder"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/810881/en-us

"How to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421/en-us
--
Ted Zieglar
"Backup is a computer user's best friend."

"Eveline" <Eveline@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9D486B9E-47F7-4BFF-977F-E18D94132FE9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello,

My computer crashed and I bought a new one. For the old hard drive
from
the
crashed computer, I bought a hard drice enclosure kit to transfer
my
files
via usb to the new computer.
I am be able to access administrator files and owner files but
when I
try
to
get the files from my created password protected account, Eveline,
everything
is restricted.
Is there a way to access my files?
I really need them.
Both hard disks have windows xp on them.
Thanks for any information
Respectfully,
Eveline







.

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