OT: External hard drive and Windows 8

I installed a new hard drive in my sister's laptop about 6 months ago. Laptop was running Vista Home Premium if I remember correctly but it has now died due to a motherboard problem (graphics).

The hard drive is still good so I got a USB caddy for it, enabling it to be used as an external drive for the new Windows 8 laptop she's now got for herself.

Apparently there's a problem - when she tries to access, say, the 'My Documents' or 'My Pictures' folders for instance, on that drive, a box pops up saying 'Access Denied' or some such message (I'm 50 miles away so can't say exactly, but we're visiting her tomorrow which is why I'm hoping to get an answer for her).

The plan is to get anything important (docs, music, pictures etc) off the drive and format it to get rid of the Vista installation and HP recovery partition, so that it then becomes just an empty 500GB external drive to be used for whatever she wants - but we can't do that if she keeps getting 'Access Denied' messages.

TIA

Reply to
Pete
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formatting link

Reply to
Mentalguy2k8

she probably needs to login as administrator to pull the stuff off.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Mentalguy2k8 explained :

formatting link

Brilliant, thank you very much.

Reply to
Pete

Reply to
Pete

Well its from another machine so it will see the user details etc, and not allow you in unless you had the original machine and could tweak the permissions. I'd have thought that turning off the user access control as we do in 7 ought to be able to solve it, but knowing Microsoft, itts bound to be more complicated!

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

That won't work under Vista or later... you will need to take ownership of the files first, then assign the access rights you need to them. Many of the system files are owned by a system service (note not a user) called Trusted Installer - even admins have no rights to access these files.

There is a handy reg file here that will add a "take ownership" context menu item to explorer here:

formatting link

Reply to
John Rumm

It is... you also can;t turn off UAC in win 8 (you can turn it down to a lower level, but not off)

Reply to
John Rumm

formatting link

i'd boot a live Linux CD then and use that to copy em

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

formatting link

Yup, or any windows pre installation environment like an XP based Bart PE disk.

Reply to
John Rumm

formatting link

I haven't installed windows for over5 years now..and that was a ancient XP..so I bow to superior knowledge.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I would too. Some live linuxes ignore permissions entirely, eg Antix IIRC, some enforce them, eg Mint 7.

If you're using it with more than one machine I'd also consider reformattin g the hdd to something that ignores access permissions completely. FAT32 is a bit long in the tooth but is the FS of choice for this. It works with al l windows and normal desktop linux distros. Its not the fastest FS, but not hing more modern eliminates permission issues. Cue the objections, some tru e some not.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

some enforce them, eg Mint 7. but you can still set up a root password, log in as root and trample delicately over any security..

the hdd to something that ignores access permissions completely. FAT32 is a bit long in the tooth but is the FS of choice for this. It works with all windows and normal desktop linux distros. Its not the fastest FS, but nothing more modern eliminates permission issues. Cue the objections, some true some not. IIRC the OP just wanted to copy it.

The disk itself is probably 4-5 years old and that's when they become error prone.

I'll mention my personal solution to this again, in case its useful

1/. Cheap atom based low power headless MB with minimal RAM and two thwacking great disks. 2/. Linux installed on it on disk 1/. home area is all the data needed by desktop machines. 100Mbps of gigabit Ethernet ensures snappy access. 3/. All disk 1/. mirrored on disk 2/ . by nightly rysnc. Data now duplicated sow wheivehever disk you have break on you., the other should be a ful auto backup. 4/. SAMBA used to file share to macs/PCS. 5/. NFS used to file share to linux desktops. 6/. Everything you want to keep data wise is all on the server. yea even unto your My Documents, desktop etc. Especially mail folders.

What this means is that everything of value is on the server in two places. The desktop is simply a means to access it. You can in reality, scrap your total desktop machine and replace with another and it will all still be there.

And your desktop machine which is the one that tends to hammer the disk more, can have any old small cheap cruddy disk on it. It only contains PROGRAMS and temporary data. All of which are replaceable.

Its also handy to use the server as a DNS caching server, to avoid any bollox you sometimes get with ISP's servers.

I think in my case the whole exercise costs around £230 to make, and its shared between two of us here. Each of us has a private place, and there are two shared places between us - one of which a called 'Videos' and is also excported as a media server which the 'smart' TV can also see.

Any wifi connected devices can also see the same data.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

some enforce them, eg Mint 7.

the hdd to something that ignores access permissions completely. FAT32 is a bit long in the tooth but is the FS of choice for this. It works with all windows and normal desktop linux distros. Its not the fastest FS, but nothing more modern eliminates permission issues. Cue the objections, some true some not.

It's only because it was the system drive it's got permission problems (in things under the user's folder tree). Using it as a portable drive, you won't get permissions appearing by mistake, so NTFS would be fine (and I think less corruptable?)

Reply to
Major Scott

Oh yes you can. And it really annoys it too, none of the stupid Metro apps work, which is a plus (not that any of them exist on my machine any more).

Reply to
Major Scott

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