I need HELP, I'm trying to recover my files from my older laptop hdds and 2 older desktop hdds. I bought the IDE>USB adapter, I connect the HDD and I get an error, saying I don't have permission to access the files. I don't get the password prompt, I wish I did, b/c I do remember the pwds for the laptops hdds, but i don't remember the ones for my desktop HDDs. OH, I'm connecting with the adapter but the hdds are winxp and I'm connecting to a win vista basic laptop. (if that makes a difference?) I've got thousands of pics on one of my drives, alot are personal, so I can't take the drives to places like best buy to recover my files, although they say they don't access the files , I do know that they do shadow the files in order to place them on dvds and if the dvds don't are unaccessible then they try other means. Anything that shadows a file is UNSECURE and can be compromised.
I looked online to see if I can buy a system to recover the files but nothing.
I just want to recover all my files, especially thousands of family photos and videos. Thanks for all the help in advance..

Hi and welcome to the WTT forums

Sorry to hear of the problems with recovering your photos:

If the photos and videos are important to you why not just copy them from your back ups, on to your Vista machine? or is the back up unreliable in some way?
If it is unreliable or for some reason incomplete then here's some info that may help.

If you have used encrypted files system (EFS) on your old drives, then this is fairly secure...... It makes recovery of the files very difficult for anyone without above average knowledge skills and expertise. There are some steps you can take that are reasonably straightforward to deal with EFS but its not a simple "point and click" solution
Here's a link that will get you started if this route if its attractive to you and relevant to your situation:
http://www.beginningtoseethelight.org/efsrecovery/

If you have not use EFS on your old drives then the problem you are experiencing may be a permissions problem...
Have a look here (be sure to read the follow up posts)
http://forum.soft32.com/win3/access-harddr...opict40713.html
These instructions are written for Win Xp so you will probably find it easier to use a Win XP machine for the recovery..... However if you wish to use your Vista machine for it then this should not present any great problems, although you will need to modify the procedures a bit.
Good luck with this.

Regards
paws

This post has been edited by paws: Sep 22 2009, 01:38 AM

Assuming this is what I suspect, it is a relatively simple process, although the steps to achieve it may appear overwhelming to those who don't know it, but 1 step at a time and you get through it, but thats only if this is purely a permissions issue.

Basically what you need to do is take ownership of the folders\files, the procedure is the same, but you may need to repeat it many times to get to the final folder(s), because each folder will probably require the same action, and the same with the physical files as well, so it's a bit of a pain, but you should get what you need at the end of it.

So connect the drive, I am not sure how far you can get before hitting the first road block, so I will simply describe the procedure then you can apply it as needed, only thing I have not tried is using the procedure on the actual drive itself, might be worth trying first, if we get lucky it will action everything on the drive in 1 go, if not then use as needed.

The procedure itself, right click on the folder\file to access, select Properties, click on the Security tab, you will see a list (maybe) of those allowed to access it in the top half, the bit in the middle has a button saying Add, click on that, in the window that opens type your user name on the system you are using, then click on Check Names, this should bring up your user name with a bit more info the system needs to locate you in the system, just apply\OK that and close the window(s) saving and exiting all the way out, you should now be able to enter that folder, thats it.

Then repeat the entire procedure as required for each further requirement, once you get to see many files you may find every single file requires you to take ownership, the fastest way in that case is to highlight ALL the files to move, then repeat the above process, that will take care of that batch, again repeat as needed, hope this helps.

The XP installation process would have formated the harddisk and wiped out everything.

If you have more than one partitions in the harddrive, only the partition with XP installed is affected. Information on the other partition would remain intact.

By the way, forget "recovery" or "undelete" mentioned above. They are useful only if the hard drive has not be formated. It is apparent that you did a clean install of XP on the same partition as the previous Windows 98 and that would no doubt have formated the disk for you........