Desktop, Documents And Other Folders Not Accessible When Hdd Is Connected Externally

Hey everyone, I have windows 10 machine and it's been dropped so I've taken the disk out to see if the data can be recovered. I've connected it via a SATA to USB adapter and the disk and data are intermittently accessible but folders such as desktop and documents show up as a shortcut in explorer and while attempting to open them gives the error "you do not have permissions to view, etc, etc".

These folders that show up as shortcuts and are not accessible while the disk is out of the computer, load okay while in the computer although its so painfully slow to open them, that anything is almost impossible.

So my question is: Why are the folders (desktop and documents) not accessible while connecting the HDD externally on another machine?

I guess it might be because it is not being accessed by the original user account while it is connected externally via adapter on another machine. Or am I wrong?

(BTW, I was not sure if this should go into the internal hardware forum, external or windows 10, as clearly, it's all three and more)