[fyrestorm]

when my computer died last week because of a fan issue, i decided to just get external casing for the hdd so that i could use it for backups and whatnot...

i can access everything on it except for the my documents folder because my login was password protected...

is there any way to recover all that data?

This post has been edited by skyhawk133: 07 March 2006 - 05:25 PM

[Piperlester]

I'm guessing you used the most wonderful NTFS on the partition/drive that your My Documents folder resided on. If so, umm... you might just be out of luck. The problem comes from the way NTFS handles security (fairly tightly).

A possible solution, re-install THAT drive as the primary, burn all the files to a CD or something like that, then you have your documents. Before wiping the drive, ensure that you can access the documents.

Other than that, it might take some expensive tools to recover the data.


Here's what Uncle Bill has to say....
http://www.microsoft...t/dataprot.mspx


Good luck!!

[Nova Dragoon]

try booting up a knoppix disk, and accessing the hdd, if you can see stuff in there, save it off to a usb drive

[Thorian]

Bart PE is a nice little application for working with harddrives it behaves like windows because it is windows. of cource you would need to make your own disk but it is pretty slick when it is completed.

Windows running from a bootable CD like knoppix

[fyrestorm]

it actually wasn't as difficult as i thought...

i have windows xp home edition so i had to boot up in safe mode and log in as an administrator and then i did the following:

browsed on old drive to documents and settings

right clicked on the users settings that i wanted

went to the security tab and clicked advanced

clicked on the owner tab

changed the owner to administrator

clicked the box that said: Replace owner on subcontainers and objects

hit apply and then all ok's to close the boxes, and i could access those files

[Piperlester]

*thinks back to the A+ material on NTFS*

Yup, that's a great way to do it... *insert retarded Cartman sounds here*

[fyrestorm]

but i could only access them as long as i was in safemode, so i still can't access them if i'm in my normal user mode...but oh well...

[Piperlester]

When you took ownership of the files/folders. Were you able to copy the files to a new location? According to M$, the new ownership 'policy' should put them to your admin account, and allow you to assign permissions to any user account on your system.

I'll see what else I can dig up on this, if you still need the files.

[fyrestorm]

i was able to copy them in safemode to my current hdd, so i was able to get to them, and i can access them as any user that way... but i couldn't access them on the old hdd as any user, only as administrator in safe mode, which is fine, i was able to get them...

[MarkoDaGeek]

It looks like you found a wicked cool way of doing this that I didnt even notice exsisted.... Nice