My laptop OS crashed suddenly. I have some documents that i need to transfer real urgently, so i connected the laptop hard drive to an external case and tried copying it to my desktop. But it says access denied cause my documents ere password protected on my laptop …
Is there any any to go around this?
You should be work around this problem if you take ownership over files as it described in this article on the Microsoft site.
Let’s say you want to take ownership over “My Documents” folder located on your laptop hard drive.
You can do it in the following order:
1. Connect the laptop hard drive to another working PC using external USB enclosure. You have to be logged in to your PC as a user with admin privileges.
2. Access the laptop hard drive through “My Computer” and navigate to the folder you want to copy to the desktop PC, probably it’s “My Documents” folder.
3. Take ownership over “My Documents” folder and all files and folder inside.
Right click on the folder >> Click on Properties >> Click on Security Tab >> Click on Advanced Button >> Clock on Owner Tab >> Highlight Administrator >> Check Replace owner on subcontainers and objects box >> Clock OK and wait until it’s done.
Now you should be able to access and transfer your files.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:27 pm
This article was very helpful - it pointed me in the right direction, I appreciate it very much. I would suggest that you also include instructions on how to activate the security tab - most users (myself included) are on the default “Simple File Sharing” Setting and would not be aware of how or why one would need to change it. Such a change would make this article more effective for less advanced users, or one like myself who was not aware of the changes needed to activate the needed tools. But over all thank you very much!
Here is the URL for the Microsoft article on how to set up folder settings to activate the advanced features:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307874/
March 18th, 2008 at 9:02 am
thank you very much… it is a great help to us… I wasnt able to retrieve my important files from my other HDD for a long time because it was password protected. But thanks to this site, my problem now is over…
Keep it up… Thanks again…
July 18th, 2008 at 5:10 am
When i am connecting my laptop hard disk to my desktop thru USB External case i didnt get security tab in properties for any folders. How could i get it…?