Assistance with external hard drive please.

Hi. I've just fitted the hard drive from my old laptop into an external enclosure. Hooking it it up via USB to my new win10 machine I cannot access any of my files. the old HD is registering okay as drive G but it's showing as empty - I think it's 'access denied' to the files. I've a lot of photos, videos etc which I would like to transfer to my new laptop. I know they're still there as the old HD is showing two thirds full.
Does anyone have any solutions to this problem? Thanks in advance.

It very simple all the files will be owned by people on the old pc even if you used the same name the SID would be different the solution is simple you take ownership of the folders we have a tutor for that and a util to make it simple Add Take Ownership to Context Menu in Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials

thank you. I'll give it a try.

I've had a quick read of the tutorial but there are no files showing for me to 'take ownership' of? I know they are still there because I did a 'command prompt' search of the disk. I'm flummoxed!?

Assuming your drive is D then do this:

1. Open elevated command prompt
See Open Elevated Command Prompt in Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials

2. Take ownership:
Type this (changing the D if your USB has another letter) into command prompt and press enter.

It will take ownership of everything for you current user with the exception of "D:\System Volume Information" which you shouldn't change (that is what the /d:N is for). Anyway just type it in as it is:

takeown /f "D:" /r /d:N

You will see something like this:

Code:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>takeown  /f  "D:\" /r /d:N

SUCCESS: The file (or folder): "D:\" now owned by user "YOURPC\You".
SUCCESS: The file (or folder): "D:\$RECYCLE.BIN" now owned by user "YOURPC\You"
SUCCESS: The file (or folder): "D:\File 1 now owned by user "YOURPC\You"

etc etc

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

3. Give yourself authority.
Again just copy this exactly - only replacing the D if required. The command prompt will replace the %blabla% with your details automatically.

icacls "D:" /grant "%USERDOMAIN%\%USERNAME%":(F) /t

You will see at the end something like this:

Code:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>icacls  "D:" /grant "%USERDOMAIN%\%USERNAME%":(F) /t
processed file: D:
processed file: D:\$RECYCLE.BIN
processed file: D:\file 1
processed file: D:\file 2
processed file: D:\file 3

D:\System Volume Information\IndexerVolumeGuid: Access is denied.
Successfully processed 32 files; Failed processing 1 files

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

That last "Access is Denied" message is OK (it is another system file) - it will now work and you'll have access.

On this topic of " Drive is not accessible. Access is denied" I came across this Quick fix - Drive is not accessible access is denied in Windows 10/8/7 - EaseUS

You may check on this as it appears to be fairly simple.

Thanks everyone. I solved the issue. I can't remember the specifics because I was concentrating too much to write anything down but Iof the few file I could see there was one called 'users'. I clicked on this then went to the name my laptop was registered under (ie 'joebloggs) I clicked on this and a window appeared asking if I wanted to Have access to the 'joebloggs' files (I can't remember the exact wording, but it wasn't 'take ownership'. I clicked on the window and, hey presto, I was in!