Getting back into old hard drive from different computer?

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I'd yanked a hard drive from an old laptop a long time ago. That machine is now running Linux and I have no desire to remove the current drive, reinstall the old one, etc.

I've got the old drive hooked up to my Windows 7 PC thru a USB adapter. It's "naked", sitting there in the open with the cables running from it into the USB adapter, which is plugged into one of my PC's front USB ports.

The malevolent thing keeps saying I don't have permission to access any of the files. I can't even get the picture files to display thru "Preview".

I knew a while back how to "gain control" of an old hard drive's files, but have totally forgotten how.

I even remember the password used on that drive when it was in the laptop.

Naturally, it's not asking me for the password. It's just saying I don't have permission.

I've tried "taking control" but must be missing some vital step.

This is making me crazy. I was looking for certain old files I'd stored, and went thru four thumbdrives and two other old hard drives (and an external backup drive) trying to find them. Now, it looks like I've found them, but the rotten thing won't allow me access. I can even SEE the files themselves, including the file extensions, but to actually open the files... Oh no. That'd be too easy.

Anyone have ANY idea what I do to get control of these things so I can open them or copy them to the PC?

Wonderful. I think it's now recognizing me as the "owner" of the whole drive.

One little problem. I keep getting this as the result of trying to open or work with ANY file-

"Could not open because the file is locked. Use the File Manager to turn off the Read-Only option."

Naturally, the "read-only" option is NOT turned on for any file.

If I even do as little a thing as hit "preview" for a picture file, I get this-

"Windows Photo Viewer can't open this picture because you don't have the correct permissions to access the file location."

It's recognizing me as the owner of the entire drive. what more permission would I need to preview a stupid file (let alone actually open or copy one)?

Try to change the settings for the files on the hard drive. Make sure you have access to them i.e read/write, delete etc.
I suppose another option is that part of the hard drive is corrupt or damaged and you can't access certain parts of your hard drive.

Here's the weird thing-
I get ownership of a folder. I'd expect anything in that folder is now mine, right? Wrong. Sub-folders inside that folder are also requiring me to gain ownership.

I did a scan of my computer with the "naked" drive sill connected by USB... The computer found a trojan in a Firefox profile. I gained ownership of that folder and tried to delete it. It wouldn't let me.

I'm not sure if this is the same drive I had in my laptop just before I put a new drive in and installed Linux or not. I don't recall any problems with that drive. The only reason it was yanked was that it had XP on it and Microsoft was about to end even support for Security Essentials on XP machines. (They'd stopped supporting the OS itself maybe a year earlier.)

What step would I take to try and gain full control of the entire drive? (I'd thought I'd already managed that. Maybe not.)

I have been hit with that infernal access issues. I'm not an alpha geek, but as I recall the windows command line program was cacls or something like that. There is a GUI way too.

If you don't care about any of the files on the HD, format it. This is the easiest option.

If you do care, consider trying to boot under a Linux distro and use the program "ntfs-3g" to get access to NTFS files. You can also use the Linux (??) program gparted to format the HD. I prefer this to using Windows, now that I got the hang of it. I have had issues with extended partitions on computers that have UEFI boot and gparted, seems using Windows 7 or higher seems to work better if you want more than four partitions.

Some of what you said went right over my head, but you did just give me an idea. If I used the USB adapter to plug into the Linux machine, would it be able to read and copy the files?

Stupid question, as an admin can you not just select the top folders and edit there permissions so that "Everyone" is the owner?

In the Security tab of the Properties window, go to advanced and change the Owner from whatever it says to "Everyone", and tick the box indicating that it should filter down to all subfolders. Then after that, again in the Security tab, add a new user to the Permissions window (by the Edit button, I think) called Everyone and save it.

It may take a while to run through, but that should work.

Sorry, I should have been paying attention.

You could use a hard drive enclosure to go from one of IDE/SATA to USB.

If you have a desktop computer, you could (with the power off) just open up the case and connect the hard drive to one of the IDE or SATA; but if its IDE, you have to get the MASTER/SLAVE/CABLE SELECT jumpers correct.

Now as to which OS to boot. You say you have a Linux laptop, you could create a bootable Linux Live CD and use the program ntfs-3g to gain access the the HD. For example, with SystemRescueCD you need to
- figure out where its mapped as (/dev/sda1, /dev/sdb2 etc). I use the program gparted to give me a graphical display. So you would need to get into the graphical environment, then from a command window run 'gparted'
- You need to mount the drive using ntfs-3g. Not sure if you HAVE to mount in the /mnt, but that's what I do.
so
cd /mnt
ll (to see what's there already)
mknod seth (or whatever)
ntfs-3g /dev/sdx# seth (where sdx# is something like sda1)
(should take a few seconds)
then
cd seth
and you should see your hard drive.
Then you would have to cd to where the files are, and then have to cp them to someplace else. Um, which means you will have to use ntfs-3g to mount another windows drive.

Hmmmm. Maybe "MisterSpock" might be easier.