I have a couple older hard drives that I added to my machine. I wanted to get old photos off of the drives. I know the password for the admin. But neither drive is letting me access the file system. Both were running Windows XP. How to get the files off these drives?
There are two possible reasons. The disk is encrypted by your old computer, or you do not have the access right on your new computer.
If the disk is encrypted, the file name will be appear in light green colour. What you have to do is move it back to the old computer and decrypt it by right click, select properties, click advanced on general type, unselect the check box of encrypt contents to secure data.
If not, right click and select properties. In security tab, select advance and add yourself in the permission tab.
Normally, if both your computer and your old hard drive are installed with Microsoft Windows XP, there should be no problem even if they are using different file systems like if the other one is using FAT32 or NTFS. If the files on your old hard drive are encrypted then that would be the problem.
But the difference is that, even if the files are encrypted, you should still be able to access the drive and view the files or your pictures. If in the first place, you cannot already open the drive, there must be something wrong. First, check if your old hard drive is connected to your computer properly.
Since you have an original hard drive installed on your CPU, when connecting your old hard drive you should configure it as slave. Change the jumper pin to make it as slave. Once this is set, you should be able to access the old hard drive on your system. Also, try using Servant Salamander to access the old hard drive.
Just visit the link, download and unpack the RAR file, and start the program. To instantly view hidden files and folders, press CTRL + H in Servant Salamander.
