Put Hard Drive From Old Computer in New

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Move an Old Hard Drive to a New PC not to use the operating system but as a second drive to have access to your data from the previous computer.

  • Access Denied
  • User Folder Invisible

quote, "I've powered up the HD and plugged the USB in I can see the folders on my old drive but when attempting to access my USER folder I get the access denied warning."

quote, "How do you migrate data and programs from a dead PC to a new one?"

To Resolve:

  1. Enable "view hidden files and folders" in explorer.
  2. Enable "Show protected files" in explorer.
  3. Follow the steps as given in Working Around TrustedInstaller

User Folders

With Windows XP the "My Documents" folder was located in the user's profile directory, such as ( Documents and Settings\<user name>\My Documents ). The "My Documents" folder was one of the many "Special folders" in Windows. It was not an absolute path but rather a user could change the physical location of "My Documents" by right-clicking on the "My Documents" icon, selecting Properties, and then entering a new folder location in the Target tab.

With Windows Vista Microsoft renamed "My Documents" as simply, "Documents". The "My" prefix was also removed from "My Music", "My Pictures" and "My Videos". These folders were now located directly under the user's profile directory as in (C:\Users\<user name>).

Then with Windows 7 Microsoft took the "Documents", "Pictures", "Music" and "Videos" folders and made them show up in Windows Explorer with a "My" prefix, however, they are actually still stored in the file system without the prefix.

Take Owner of Secondary Drive

  1. Click Start , click All programs , and click Accessories .
  2. Right-click Command Prompt and click Run as administrator .
  3. In Administrator: Command Prompt window,
  4. Type "takeown /F (external drive letter)" and press Enter.
  5. Type "CACLS (external drive letter) /G Administrator:F" and press Enter.


see also: How To Take Ownership of Files or Folders or an Entire Hard Drive

Folder is not accessible / Access Denied

Even if you are the owner of the HDD, you need to make sure that Authenticated Users is given "Read Folder contents", etc. permissions.

Can't find the User folder on Backup Drive

If you take the drive out of a dead computer and place it in the new computer as a secondary drive, or connect it as an external drive with the hopes of gaining access to all your data, you may find a hitch. If the computer that died was in a "suspended" state as a result of "hybrid sleep" then the data will be locked away.

When you turn off your computer using hibernate, the operating system needs to store all your current running program states onto hard disk so that programs can resume where they left off when you power up your PC again. To achieve this, the OS need to save all the information into a file called hiberfil.sys. Windows OS (7, vista, XP) usually stores this as a hidden file under your C directory or your main OS partition.

The dir command alone won't show hiberfil.sys. You use type "dir /ah" 

dir /ah

ref: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/263317-32-files-external-they-hidden

If you don't know the folder name or you want to catch everything, the following method takes some time. If the old hard drive letter is F then at the command prompt type the following: 

cd f:
attrib -s -h /s /d

After the command completes you may see the files. If you see a folder with no name, open it and your files are within.

Related Articles

keywords: TrustedInstaller Security Permissions Advanced Full Control Take Ownership Owner access denied not accessible

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