Rescuing Users files on a corrupt HD and the security implications

Standard file security is based on the OS's Filesystem security. A Linux (or even another Windows computer) can, by default, read, write, delete, etc anything.

The first rule of security is that if you have physical access to the machine (ie, if you can take out the hard drive or boot from another drive) then you don't have any security. The security only works with the OS itself.

There are, however, ways to improve that security. For instance, you can use folder encryption which will prevent the files from being readable by any user account other than the user that created them. There is all full-disk encryption, with Bitlocker and a few other tools that prevent the entire drive from being accessed if you do not have the right security key.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions. I have managed to copy the data across from the old drive to the ssd by simply selecting the folders nested beneath the user account directory. Originally I'd just copied the whole user account directory and when I'd rebooted the directory was still there taking up 7GB but when I drilled down into it there was one small file and and empty directory (hidden files etc was set to display). So not sure what was going on there.

But all is sorted now and thanks for all the contributions :)

Yes that is something I'd not been aware of and I'm sure 95% of Windows users out there haven't a clue either, kind of frightening really. I will be looking at folder encryption for sure. First port of call will be bitlocker.

Mystere said:

Standard file security is based on the OS's Filesystem security. A Linux (or even another Windows computer) can, by default, read, write, delete, etc anything.

The first rule of security is that if you have physical access to the machine (ie, if you can take out the hard drive or boot from another drive) then you don't have any security. The security only works with the OS itself.

There are, however, ways to improve that security. For instance, you can use folder encryption which will prevent the files from being readable by any user account other than the user that created them. There is all full-disk encryption, with Bitlocker and a few other tools that prevent the entire drive from being accessed if you do not have the right security key.