Thought I'd ask the BBS before causing myself any further financial hardship. Couple of months back, my laptop crashed, I got this blue screen, and every time I tried to use it for anything other than general Internet browsing, it broke. Then there was issues with the screen. Long and short of it was I needed a new one. Bought one. Went to back up my old files from the old laptop and whilst it powers up, there's no display, so I think there's something wrong with the graphics card. Anyway I bought and adaptor so I could plug the old hard drive into my new laptop. Got it out, plugged it in, and whilst my new laptop acknowledges that the hard drive is connected, it doesn't have any files on it. There's a storage figure saying its about 40% full, but there's no actual files inside. Anyone know whether there's some sort of security setting, or a way of unhiding files, if that is indeed the problem? Cheers.
Without your laptop in front of me it's hard to advise but I'll have a go: Could you try plugging a different monitor/screen into your old laptop so you can view the files on there? Daft question but have you made sure that 'show hidden files' is ticked in the folder options? On your new laptop have you gone into the 'properties' and then 'security' section on the hard drive and made sure that you have permission to access the files? You may also have to go into the 'advanced' section and make sure that you are the 'owner'. You may also have to tick the option to Replace all child object permission entries with inheritable permission entries from this object. (This can take a while after clicking 'apply').
Try to see if the files on your old hard drive are "Hidden" you can alter the status so you can see the files . It is often hidden to stop people deleting required files.
Il assuming the old hard drive also has the os on it therefore plugging the hard drive into to new laptop will show space taken up but it will be behind the os and any user accounts you had set up via the original laptop as the hard drive wasn’t solely used for saving your files. As for accessing it via the new laptop that’s above my knowledge currently although there will be a way
I think I've got permission to view everything. I tried following something online and I think that as it says administrator and full permission, I think I'm okay on that front.
Yeah I read something similar online, I think I've got permission to view things (I think anyway, I'm clearly no expert). All the videos online make it look as simple as plug and play.
You get to it by doing this: Go to the Control Panel and select Appearance and Personalization. You should see the window 'Folder Options'. Click the Options icon on the right of the ribbon. Under the 'view' tab, check "show hidden files, folders, and drives" and uncheck "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)" or "Hide extensions for known file types". Then check whether your files/folders are there.
I've just plugged it in to try get this to work, and as if by magic, the folder has popped up with all the files there. Thanks for your help everyone, it seems I'm just a little impatient.
If you had Bitlocker or some other encryption scheme on your old laptop then you won't be able to decrypt the files to view them on the new laptop. If you have no joy with Windows, download a copy of knoppix, burn to CD/DVD and boot from that. This should remove any issues that Windows brings into the equation. Bugger. You beat me to it. At least its working and someone might benefit from this in the future.
