I ask this question in relation to (2) hard drives from my other computer. One of the drives was (obviously) the master and of course my slave drive also from that machine raises another question. The situation is that I received a message that windows could not start because it could not find "\Windows\System32\System" so I performed a recovery
restore on the drive from the restore sector of the HD. This did not work and I still had the same message, after talking to people in the biz I am told that the drive may have a bad sector
but this does not explain why the system refers to not being able to start windows when I would think a bad HD would:

1. Still be able to start windows after a full recovery process.

2. Would indicate another message not referring to windows at all..perhaps more like "boot sector missing please insert system disk".

Anyway..what I did was to take the master out and slave it to my other computer at which point I could see all files except those files which were in the Documents & Settings\Owner directory since it told me that this folder was "not accessible" the first part of my question.................is there anyway to get these files since they are obviously protected. All the files which I had saved in folders under the C: drive were visible and I did recover them nicely but I have some important files under this "not accessible" area!

The second part of my question refers to my slave drive which had a lot of music files (mp3's) on it. When I slave that drive to my working computer I cannot see any of the mp3's yet I know they are there. When I check the drive on "my computer" for used space it shows me a very small fraction of space being used when I know I have around 50% of this drive loaded with mp3,s.
So the question here is essentially the same question as part one
"is there to get these files (mp3's)". This drive was always a slave drive yet windows apparently has some files on it which are the only files viewable. I cannot understand why I cant see all of my mp3's" Any help would be greatly appreciated! I would even be willing to pay anyone who could resolve this since I do value these files!

As to your accessing the "not accessible" stuff on your old Master-HD: Under Win2000 or WinXP you will have to take "ownership" of that specific directory(-tree).
Check for my (realblackstuff) entries in the this post how to get access to "denied" data.
http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=71715

As to your Slave-HD with MP3's, the older system (with W98?) you are using to check that HD cannot read what is probably NTFS. Put it in a system with W2K or XP to copy the data, or fix the Master-HD from before (or replace it), and put everything back in the original PC.

HTH