File recovery from hard drive

My laptop computer died. I thought maybe the hard drive had gone bad, but it still works installed in a usb enclosure hooked up to another computer. The problem is I can't access "My Documents" . I get an "access denied" message when I try to copy the whole folder to another computer (both running XP). When I explore within "My Documents", folders such as "My pictures" & "CAD Drawings" show "folder is empty". I ran an Avast scan of the entire Documents & Settings folder, and all the photos and drawings show as still there. Any tips on how to retrieve my documents ? Thanks

 

Try clicking on the outside folder first, look in properties and see if anything is hidden. I would also go to Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization, and click on Folder options and unhide all folders(it does have an effect external drives.) I would also look around to see if maybe there is more than one folder with that name. And I have never had good luck with the search functions on windows.


Hope that helps:cool

 

It's best done with a boot disk rather than through Windows, as boot disks just ignore all the Windows security features and allow access to all files. Loads of boot disks around but I find Puppy Linux the smallest and easiest to use. Create the live CD and boot to it in whatever comp the busted drive is connected to or installed in. You need a second drive available of course to receive the copies.

 

Earthling- I used Puppylinux to access the drive, and can find the files I need to copy, but everything is marked "read-only file system". How do I change permissions(?) to allow me to copy files to my "c" drive (which also mounted as read-only?) I am the only user of the computer, with administrator priveledges.

 

Well normally you just open the drive and folder containing your files, and open the drive and folder you want to copy them to, and simply drag and drop from the one to the other. I'm in the Puppy live CD right now and am able to do this with the XP system installed on this laptop, no problem, and certainly no permission issues. I'm hoping you are simply using the live CD version of Puppy, and have not installed it to the hard disk?

 

Earthling -- I was able to change the permissions of both the folder I wanted to copy from, and the folder I wanted to copy to to read/write, and PppyLinux let me drag and drop files, but they are nowhere to be found when I reboot into windows. I am unmounting the 2 drives before I tell Puppylinux to shutdown and reboot. Is this correct? Also, when it asks me if I want to save the session, I have said no. I thought this was what you referred to before when you said did I save it to my hard drive (I'm running it from the boot CD).

 

Earthling -- Success! I found the files I had copied, just not where I thought I had copied them. Now all I have to do is find my software discs (I've moved twice in the past year) for the CAD programs & reinstall them to view/open my drawings. Thanks again for your help. It was a lot easier downloading PuppyLinux and the iso burning software they suggested than finding my old linux boot disks in my storage garage.

 

Great news. You must be feeling very relieved at recovering your CAD files and thanks for letting us know. :major

Puppy is so nice to use I often boot it in preference to XP when on this old laptop, but you do need to save your session of course. I've got it set up so I can boot the Puppy iso straight off the hard disk from a boot menu, so my rescue tool is up and waiting for the day trouble strikes .