Do you need special permissions to access an old internal HDD from another computer?

Question

I was trying to copy files from a friend's damaged laptop. The hard drive still works, so I simply put the hard drive into a 2.5mm enclosure and connected it to my laptop via USB. The drivers installed fine, I was able to open up the root directory, and browsed to the "Users" folder. But when I tried to enter the particular user folder, it told me You do not have access to this folder. Click to get permanent access to this folder. Of course I did, and then after trying for an unusually long time (~2 minutes), it failed and the hard drive disappeared in my computer. (Note: The file system is not encrypted)

I also tried on Ubuntu Linux. This time, I was able to explore the user folder, but when I tried to copy files over, it waited a long time and then gave me a Error splicing file: Input/Output Error.

I found this question, which is supposed to work for XP. It points to this knowledge base article. Can I do essentially the same thing? (Both the damaged laptop and my laptop are Windows 7)

Answer 1

Windows 7 also comes with takeown utility, which you can run against the second drive.

On a command prompt, switch to the 2nd drive, e.g.

C:\>E:

Then run takeown

takeown /r /d y /f * 

Followed by icacls

icacls * /t  /grant Everyone:F

This was described in other question here on SuperUser.

Answer 2

While the file system itself might not be encrypted, the files themselves could be encrypted.
I only know this from personal --and very frustrating-- experience. I had to boot into an earlier unencrypted Win7 installation and, through the properties dialog, unencrypt all of my user files before I was able to access them from the new OS.
You might want to try accessing the files through a live linux CD/usb. If you are not able to read the files from linux, you can be fairly certain that the files in question have been encrypted, at which point you'll have to unencrypt them in order for them to be of any use. Good luck.

Answer 3

If the HDD is giving you errors during long periods of disk usage, I would be worried about the integrity of the drive.

If the hard drive from the damaged laptop might also be damaged, it would be better to start by retrieving the most important files first without running anything that may cause a lot of HDD activity (such as takeown or icacls using * to do the whole drive).

You want to minimize drive activity until you get any crucial data off of it.

In your case, I would:

1. Make a list of important data (most important goes first)
2. Give yourself access to the first item
3. Copy the data to another location

(repeat steps 2 and 3 for the rest of the items in the list)

You can use the takeown/icacls combo on a specific directory during this process, if you want, or you could just use the GUI option to gain access.

Your first attempt may have failed because of issues with the HDD, not issues with the process of gaining permissions.