Access Is Denied; Not Accessible

[Guest]

As some of you may know, I could not access the files on my old laptop hard
drive. Someone reputable managed to get my drive to spin, so I could recover
my data. The replacement drive Dell sent me is currently situated in my Dell
Latitude D505 (running Windows XP Home). I have managed to access some
files, but there are others in a folder which I cannot. I keep receiving the
following message: "E://***** is not accessible. Access is denied". It is E
drive because it is attached via USB. I tried changing my BIOS boot menu to
run the old drive, but it kept booting to the new one. Any suggestions on
how I can access the files will be appreciated. I'm thinking, as a last
resort, to take out the new drive, replace it with the old drive, boot to
that, copy the files to USB, remove the old drive, replace it with the new
drive. I am going to see the recovery technician later today, so any
suggestions before that would be helpful. I know about accessing the folder
via Safe Mode, changing the folder settings.
Thanks

 

[John John]

You need to take ownership of the files.

http://search.technet.microsoft.com/search/Default.aspx?brand=technet&query=take+ownership

John

 

[Guest]

The only way for me to take ownership of the files would be to switch the
drives and run safe mode on the old drive. If the old drive shows files
present, does this mean that Windows XP Home is still present? I do not want
to switch the drives and then discover that it has become unbootable again
(the drive became unbootable, hence the need to access the files).

 

[John John]

You don't have to "switch" the drives, just take ownership of the files
on drive E or grant yourself necessary permissions to them. If you are
using XP Home just boot to Safe-Mode on the current installation and
take ownership of the files on disk E.

Without rebooting into Safe Mode you can grant yourself necessary
permissions to the files with the CACLS command. You must have
Administrative privileges to use the command and it must be used at the
Command Prompt.

This will grant full permissions on all the files and folders on drive
e: to all members of the Administrators group:

cacls e:\ /t /e /g Administrators:f

This will grant full permissions on all the files and folders on drive E
to John Doe:

cacls e:\ /t /e /g "John Doe":f

For help on the command do: cacls /?

John

 

[Guest]

I'll try it out later and let you know how it goes.
Thanks.