Recovering personal files from an old IDE HD

[AmnWatkins]

Hey all, I am brand new to this forum and dealing with the internals of computers. Please bear with me.

I have a really old eMachines (2000-2002) that just recently took a dump. It would no longer power on at all. So I went to the store and got a power supply, and for the first time ever took the side panel off of the tower. After switching the bad power supply for the good one, the CPU powered right up. However, I had no video output which led me to belive that my video card is bad. My next step was to return the power supply and get an IDE hard drive enclosure that I picked up at a locally owned computer shop. I hooked up the enclosure to my laptop and let kaspersky go to work on all the viruses and what not I knew had to be on there from that way that thing had started acting over the years. Once completed I went to retreive the information (twelve years worth of music, photos, ect.) that I cared about. upon opening Music, the folder was empty, pictures was that same case. So then I found Jims Share Drive (IIRC) that had a large file size. I guess that's where all my stuff is, but when I try to open the file I get told that I don't have the privledges. I never put a password up or anything. Is there any way to bypass this so I can access my stuff.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Also, I hope I didn't ramble too much.

 

[gguerra]

Make sure you have administrator rights. I will assume you are on at least Win XP.. Right click on the folder in question, go to properties, security. Check the setting there. Add yourself to the list.

 

[LookinAround]

You need to "take ownership" of files and folders on the drive. Just google take ownership XP (or similar based on your OS).

 

[Row1]

in the future, store things in your own data/media file

Hi - I am glad you are getting help on how to store these things.

If you look at it visually, Windows fools us to think that our files are stored in some "documents" file that is not on the "c" drive, but floating out there somewhere. Also, anything placed on the "desktop."

Logic dictates that our files HAVE to be on the c drive somewhere. That "documents" folder, the "pictures" folder, the 'music" folder, the "download" folder, "desktop," etc. therefore have to have some funky, unknown location on the hard drive. This is why you cannot tell where your files are located, by any file directory tree on the drive, when hooked externally to some other drive.

For years, I have been ignoring those "documents" folders. I put my data and media files in folder I make. So, if I have to pull the hard drive out, I can locate these files easily.

I hope this suggestion helps someone.

 

[AmnWatkins]

I just want to thank you all for the assistance. I was able to access my files without any problems