Topic: Trying to copy files off old harddrive - Permission Error

[blu666z]

Bought a new drive a while back and installed XP in it.  Now I have put the old drive in as a slave and I'm trying to pull some files off it.  When I try to open a folder on the old drive, I get an "H:\Transfers is not accessible.  Access is denied."  These are folders that were created on my old PC while logged on as the admin.  Have I shot myself in the foot?  Also, how can I reformat the old drive and get it back to one partition?

-Kevin

[phrazelle]

THIS IS ONLY TO FORMAT AND PARTITION YOUR DRIVE.  DO NOT DO THIS UNTILL YOU RETRIEVE YOUR INFO FROM THE HDD.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0a6b1f6294198b091346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software%20Downloads/ATA%20Hard%20Drives&downloadID=22

run this and make a boot disk.  boot w/ it and do a low level format on your drive.  or you can just put your XP disc in and boot from it and do a regular format.  as long as its connected to your HDD chain inside your box, it shouldnt have a problem identifing and formating. 

[MattD]

Kevin, if you boot into DOS (use a Win98 bootdisk), can you see that drive? If so, you can use the xcopy function to transfer the data.

[blu666z]

Anyway to boot into DOS w/o a 98 disk?

-Kevin

[MattD]

Not that I know of. If you can't find win98 anywhere, just make yourself a disk here: http://www.bootdisk.com/

-Matt

[bhtoque]

The utility discs that come with maxtor and Western digital drives have a copy one drive to another function.

Just boot to the cd (may have to change boot order in bios) and run the utility program.

JAson

[phrazelle]

The utility discs that come with maxtor and Western digital drives have a copy one drive to another function.

Just boot to the cd (may have to change boot order in bios) and run the utility program.

JAson

if thats the case, you can use the program at the link i posted

[peeeper]

To get to DOS at bootup in a WIN98 /98se box try this; once the 98 startup screen is displayed start pressing F8.  You should get a boot menu with a few options and a few more at the very bottom of the screen.  I would suggest using the shift+F5 option to get to the command line and do what you need to do.

[peeeper]

Ops, I wasn't reaing your post clearly enough.  You're not on a 98 box but rather trying to get files off of an older drive that once was on a 98 box.  You're now running XP.   So here is some additional help:

Try turning off the Indexing service (Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Services; scroll down to, double click on Indexing, click the Stop button, try moving the files again). That fixes the "file in use" most of the time.  If that doesn't work or you get a message about "access denied" and something about "permissions," follow the steps http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421

[blu666z]

Both old and new drives are XP drives.

-Kevin

[hyperplane]

this may or may not work (it's worked for me every time i've need it, for retrieving files from a HD)... get a $20 external enclosure case that connects via USB or Firewire, put the old HD in it (make sure the jumper on the old HD is set to Master), connect it to your PC... then drag & drop, or copy & paste (or whatever your method is) to retrieve the files.

then, with something like Partition Magic, formatting the old HD and making it a single empty partition/drive is a snap as well. (you can even do this while the old HD is in the external enclosure.)

i did this very same thing about 6 weeks ago.

[Craig T]

try running "chkdsk /f" on the problem drive.

[Steve J]

I have a question: are you running Norton Antivirus? I ran into a similar problem running NAV Professional and it had to do with allowing permissions in the Norton Recycle Bin.

[ScottT]

Not sure if you worked around this problem yet...  Check out THE ULTIMATE BOOT CD.  It's free, and includes more utilities than you can shake a stick at.  There's bound to be something on there that will grant you access to those files.

At first I was going to recommend Knoppix (CD-based version of Linux), but it doesn't play nice with NTFS.  If your drives are FAT, then Knoppix would be an easy way to copy those files to the new drive.