Windows 7 - HDD "Access Denied" (help!!!)

I am using Win 7 Pro x64 on a Sony VAIO notebook, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD. I also have an external 500GB HDD on USB.

I was backing up my drive (creating a drive image) and during the process the notebook bluescreened. After rebooting, I tried to access the external HDD, but access was denied.

I ran "chkdsk Z: /R /B" and it took 14 hours to complete. Once it was done, same thing, "access denied."

I ran my partition manager, and rana repair with it, and it took a couple of hours. The partition manager can explore (and see) the folders and files on the drive.

Windows Drive Manager says it is a healthy partition, NTFS formatted. But Windows cannot or will not access the drive. I powered the drive down and let it sit a few hours, tried changing the drive letter, etc...

"Computer" in Windows Explorer shows the drive letter and label (correctly) but not the "used/free space" indicator.

Does anyone here know how I can regain access to this drive? I need to rescue my backups! They are there, but windows just won't open the drive.

See the screenshots for details.

Access denied on external hard drive. - Microsoft Answers

richprice,

Boot from a System Repair Disc.

Can you now access the files?

CREATE A SYSTEM REPAIR DISC

START | type System Repair | Enter key | Create Disc button

Well, I've gotten past the problem and recovered all my backups.

I have a lot of different system repair discs (including the Windows System Repair Disc for this system) and I can't get into the drive with any of the Windows or WinPE-based CDs.

However, I did create a bootable USB key using MEPIS Linux v, 11 x64. It opened the drive, let me copy all my files and now everything is safe. I'll have to fix that external HDD or buy a new one, but at least I have all my files.

I do thank you for the repair disc suggestion.

rich,
The repair disc should have gotten you in.

Now if you are interested in making that drive usable, let us know.

Well, I don''t know why none of the repair discs (and rescue CDs) would give me access. All of them SHOULD have. I only tried the Linux thing out of desperation. (I REALLY needed those files and backups.

Just so you know, I used my partitioning tool to reformat the drive, and it is usable again. I'm not going to trust it as much as I used to, so I'm getting 2 more backup drives. I get paranoid that way.

But I really do thank you all for your advice. I find a lot of good posts here just searching.

in the future, add the "Everyone" group to the ACL with full control. This will fix your problem anytime you format or change computers.

The everyone group will automatically be added if he cleans and formats a new disk. Not only that, the everyone group will have full permission.

It's been cleaned and reformatted. It seems fine now; I'm going on the supposition that the error that caused the bluescreen during imaging corrupted the MFT or something else with drive info on it.

The drive is probably perfectly good now, but I'm still going to buy a couple more drives as redundant backups so that if one fails again, I still have the others to fall back on.

Thanks a million guys.

rich,
Glad to hear that all is well now.

and enjoyed your sig advice on passwords.