I salvaged my old hard drive to an external enclosure.(

[Barry Wuthrich]

I put my old hard drive into an external enclosure.(XP home) How can I transfer my files to my new laptop?

Windows 7 says to export the transfer utility to my old computer. My old computer won't boot up. I think the motherboard fried.

Is there any way to import these files for transfer into my laptop from the (now) external hard drive?

I tried importing pics and finding my music. Access was denied on the "import pics" command, and I cant even see my music libraries.

I used my creative mediasource5 sniffer to search for MP3's on my external drive E. It found hundreds of little sound bites from the program files, but not my music that is in the old creative mediasource5 libraries and Windows media player library.

Many of my documents aren't showing up when I browse the files on my old hard drive E.

I need some help, please.

Thanks,
Barry

 

[kegobeer]

If the drive isn't damaged, it should be as easy as plugging the external enclosure into your Windows 7 computer, then browsing the files. Are you able to use Windows Explorer to view the directories and files on the external drive?

 

[DocBrown]

I put my old hard drive into an external enclosure.(XP home) How can I transfer my files to my new laptop?

Windows 7 says to export the transfer utility to my old computer. My old computer won't boot up. I think the motherboard fried.

Is there any way to import these files for transfer into my laptop from the (now) external hard drive?

I tried importing pics and finding my music. Access was denied on the "import pics" command, and I cant even see my music libraries.

I used my creative mediasource5 sniffer to search for MP3's on my external drive E. It found hundreds of little sound bites from the program files, but not my music that is in the old creative mediasource5 libraries and Windows media player library.

Many of my documents aren't showing up when I browse the files on my old hard drive E.

I need some help, please.

Thanks,
Barry

You might have to take ownership rights to that HD when it is plugged in

 

[Barry Wuthrich]

If the drive isn't damaged, it should be as easy as plugging the external enclosure into your Windows 7 computer, then browsing the files. Are you able to use Windows Explorer to view the directories and files on the external drive?

When I plug it in to my laptop, I get an autoplay menu box with several options.

I have tried most of them including, 'view files with windows explorer'. I can only see a small fraction of my stuff.

 

[Barry Wuthrich]

How do I take ownership rights? Someone else told me that, but the link they gave would've required a download that changed my registry. I was leary of messing with the registry, so I am still looking for a solution.

 

[kegobeer]

No registry hacks are necessary. You just right click on the drive icon, select security, then advanced, and one of the tabs is an ownership tab. I'm going from memory here, so I might have missed something.

 

[Barry Wuthrich]

Got Lucky

I couldn't take ownership of the files in the recommended way. I guess that only takes ownership of the files you can see.

I decided to browse some of the files I could see and clicked on the documents and settings folders. There were a couple of users listed.
Administrator, and CPuser and something else. I remembered that the guy who set up my computer for me fixed it so I could just turn it on and go to work without signing in. Apparently I was automatically signed in as CPuser.

When I clicked on CPuser, I got a dialog box that said I didn't have access to those files. And there was a check box to permanently take control of the files. I clicked on it and waited about a minute or two and all my lost files showed up. 15 gigs worth.

Thanks for the help.
Barry

 

[hgernhardtjr]

I am having the same problems: fried my MB but aparently good XP HD. So I purchased a new Windows 7 Core i7 machine to do video editing along with the photography editing.

I can get into and transfer any USER files (Administrator, etc) on the salvaged-XP-and-put-in-an-external-FireWire-enclosure-drive, EXCEPT I cannot get into my own User/Henry (it even denies me from seeing the file structure within my User/Henry) to transfer various files I need access to ... and am unable to "take ownership" — Win7 will not let me. (There were no passwords or logons involved with that XP HD, btw).

Any help would be appreciated. If worse comes to worse, I suppose I can put it into one of my lab's older XP machines, save the stuff out from there (to DVD, whathaveyou), then put it onto the Win7 box, but that is very time consuming and I really should not have to do that. It should be as easy as I have done in the past with older Win versions: put the drive in an external enclosure and transfer the files. Period.

Thanks for any help!

 

[FZ21Z]

Try the steps here - Windows 7 Take Ownership & Grant Permissions to Access Files & Folder

 

[hgernhardtjr]

I had Googled that site last night and followed the steps with no luck. Perhaps I missed something, though, so will try again this evening. The thing that frustrates me though, is whenever Win7 fusses at me it demounts that external drive and I have to turn it off and back on for Win7 to recognize it again (only when trying to "take ownership" of my own directory ... like I said, all other files on that drive are accessible).

 

[FZ21Z]

Strange. I've got files of a few drives requiring ownership, and all it required was a right click to take ownership of the whole drive.

 

[gregrocker]

Another good reason to drag your files manually and not use transfer wizards.

Normally just copying over the active User file will get everything - including hidden AppData (settings), although that is best left unimported as it is a corruption path.

 

[wallyinnc]

I had Googled that site last night and followed the steps with no luck. Perhaps I missed something, though, so will try again this evening. The thing that frustrates me though, is whenever Win7 fusses at me it demounts that external drive and I have to turn it off and back on for Win7 to recognize it again (only when trying to "take ownership" of my own directory ... like I said, all other files on that drive are accessible).

Check if you don't have a user named "All users" or something like that with no permissions for that drive / folders. Check the permissions for "Users" and "Administrators" as well, all should be full control. It happened to me that I gave my own user control, but these generic users had no access and somehow overruled and denied my access. I solved it when I changed them.

 

[hgernhardtjr]

Thanks for everyone's suggestions. Right click for ownership does not work at all, at least for me on this external XP drive.

Dragging and dropping my files is exactly what I want to do, Greg, since I remain in control of where they go. I was able to open the other users that I looked at, Wally, but will double check to make sure I didn't miss one.

 

[wallyinnc]

Tks Henry
But I meant the users in your present computer, not the old ones still in the old drive.
When you access the Permissions window, check to see what the permissions are for all users:

 

[hgernhardtjr]

Yep, I misunderstood ... will do that. Thanks for the clarification!

 

[hgernhardtjr]

Well, no luck ... so I simply plugged it into an XP machine and was able to read ALL the files and begin my rather selective transfers using a couple of 8gb flash drives and some DVDs. Slow, but there's less than 50gb of stuff to transfer (plus or minus). I'll go to the external backup drives/DVDs for all the rest.

 

[Barry Wuthrich]

Sounds like you're probably about done, but I had one other thought. When I bought the external drive enclosure, the salesman told me I could just buy a pigtail to connect the HD to the USB port on my laptop. This doesn't even require the HD to be turned on for file access/transfer.

I don't know why that would make any difference, but anything is worth a try.

 

[hgernhardtjr]

Your enclosures are different from mine, Barry, and sound like the smaller "pocketable" units that require no external power other than what they receive from the USB port. I use one of them with my notebook when I'm traveling and photoediting on the job.

Mine are the older, larger, desktop kind that require external power and have a switch on them ... yet can be connected by USB, FireWire, or eSata. I tried all three types of connections and no luck ... but, like I said, plug it into another XP machine and everything was open and available for doing anything I wanted to, from copying to editing.

It's just some kind of complex security-paranoid-Micro$oft procedures that make it hard for the common man but easy for the hacker to do whatever they want ... though you would think they would make it simple. Aren't computers supposed to do that? Make our jobs simpler and automated?:sarc:

Nahhh ... and they make the OS a true nag, nag, nag product also, ala Vista. Nags you about everything!!! At least Win7 has cut the nagging down to a manageable level!!!