Laptop HD

[Eversor]

I pulled a hard drive out of laptop to access the data on the drive. I have a convertor that lets me hook it into my standard computer and the drive shows up just fine. The issue is that the laptop drive was loaded with XP and the user had a password to log into Windows. I can see the entire drive just fine. When I use Windows Explorer and navigate to Documents and Settings - > Owner (this is what he was logging in as so this is his home dir). The bad part is that when you have a password login for XP and try to access the drive when installed in another computer it won't let you access the users home dir. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about how to access the drive. The reason I had to pull the drive is because his laptop won't boot and I need to get about 7 years worth of database files off the drive as well as the users My Documents folder.

[nihil]

I take it that you are running XP on the other machine. Have you tried logging in as administrator? That's THE Administrator account. Also you might try setting up an "Owner" account or whatever on your machine.

Just a couple of thoughts.

[White Scorpion]

try running a live linux distro like knoppix instead. this way your would have full control over the data that is on the disk since windows isnt interfering anymore

(of course when data is encrypted it stays encrypted when you use knoppix, but thats another story )

[SirDice]

Just take ownership of the files in question. That will reset the ACLs. It cannot authorise you because the SIDs are different, hence the access denied.

[White Scorpion]

Just take ownership of the files in question. That will reset the ACLs. It cannot authorise you because the SIDs are different, hence the access denied.

wouldn't that cause problems when you would use that same HDD in the laptop again? i presume you would have to take ownership once more then.

[nihil]

White Scorpion,

The reason I had to pull the drive is because his laptop won't boot and I need to get about 7 years worth of database files off the drive as well as the users My Documents folder.

Sounds like he has written off the machine?

[White Scorpion]

White Scorpion,

quote:
The reason I had to pull the drive is because his laptop won't boot and I need to get about 7 years worth of database files off the drive as well as the users My Documents folder.


Sounds like he has written off the machine?

oh yeah, you're right, must have missed that ..

[Eversor]

Thanks everyone for the input. I had to boot the system with the laptop drive in it into Safe Mode and change the ACL lists as was mentioned by SirDice. I was killing myself trying to access the file and trying to change the ownership of the file but forgot that in order to edit the owner of the file I had to boot into Safe Mode to get the options. Thanks to everyone who helped in this, I appreciate it.