HELP Reading files on external harddrive?

Question

I just got new laptop with Vista. My old password-protected laptop had Windows XP. So when it died, computer tekkies moved the harddrive to an external casing. Plugging it into my new laptop even with my security settings under Administrator, I'm still getting popup security measures with Vista. And some of the files (personal documents) I cannot access or even read. This is really ticking me off. Please help!

Answer 1

Try making sure your user name and password on the new computer are identical to the ones you used on the old one. Then you may need to take ownership of the files and folders on the old drive.  Being logged in as an administrator will help.



If you have no luck with that, then boot up the new computer with a Linux live CD, and use the file handling programs there to copy your files to the new computer.

 

Answer 2

Chances are you're going to need some industrial-strength utilities to recover those files. Windows encryption is based on the user SID (Security Identifier) and that is unique for each account. Recreating an account with the same name and password isn't going to do it. Even if you had accidentally deleted a user account, and recreated it on the same system since the SID is made up with system information and a time stamp.



There is a possible cheap workaround: Assuming the old drive is still useable, make it the boot device for your Vista system. (Disable the internal HDD or set it to not be a boot device). When your system boots to XP on the old drive (you'll probably want to use Safe Mode for this you should be able to log in with your old username/password (SID) and un-encrypt the files.



For simplicities sake, save the files unencrypted until you move them to your new system disk.



Also, a lot of the security warnings you see in Vista are there because Vista is preventing poorly written applications from escalating their own privilege to run without your knowledge. There is a lot of software both commercial and share/nag/free-ware that tries to run as "System" which saved programmers from some coding bother, but was also a huge known security hole that could be exploited.

Answer 3

Hi whippers

The reason is that the old drive was not set up to file share, this could be corrected but would require another visit to a TECH.

he would have to install the old laptop drive in a desktop computer and be given the password in order to give the drive permission to share its files. Then he would give it back in the external case and it would be possible.

Answer 4

external hard drives are formatted fat32 for compatibility but a fat32 formatted drive can only handle a file that is 4GB in size any larger you get the error you're getting an ntfs formatted drive can handle a file size up to the size of the disk. if you format the drive ntfs you won't be able to use it on devices such as Macs you'll only be able to use it on computers running windows 2000 and later to convert to ntfs opent up a command prompt and use the command convert to find how to use convert type at the command prompt convert/? it'll give you the instructions on how to do it doing it this way won't format the drive and it'll leave any files on the drive intact Additional: your suggestion of using winrar is a good alternative to changing the drive format to ntfs winrar will allow you to spit a file in to several pieces say you spilt it into four then you'll have four files just over a gigabyte in size allowing you to copy them the fat32 hard drive

Answer 5

There is a way that i think might help first plug in ur external harddisk then log onto ur new laptop as administrator only.Then once the external harddisk is recognised then goto tools->folder options->and disable simple file sharing->then right click ur external harddisk ->properties->then in security tab->give full access.



try that and see if it works.