Can't access my external hdd. Access is denied.

[Pizamotas]

I can't access my external hdd. Trying to open it says that it's not accessible (access is denied).

I've tried taking ownership of it through Properties>Security>Advanced
Unable to set new owner on OS (G: ). Access is denied

I've tried taking ownership through cmd takeown command
ERROR: Access is denied.

I've tried sharing the drive through Properties>Sharing>Advanced Sharing
An error occurred while trying to share G. Access is denied.

I've even tried some registry hack supposed to help me take ownership of files.
But that doesn't work on entire drives.

That's pretty much all of the solutions I've found on the internet so far.
Anybody got any other solutions to my problem?

Thanks in advance.

Also I don't currently have a chance to try accessing it from another machine.
Also it used to be my main internal hdd but I've switched it out for a new one and would like to transfer some of the files from it. It still has OS installed on it if that makes any difference.

edit: I've also tried changing its letter and formatting it, doesn't even let me do that.

 

[01111111]

Can you boot off of it and move the files that way?

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Pizamotas,

Have you tried to first take ownership of the drive and grant permissions afterwards. Check this extensive tutorial out: http://www.preyerplanning.com/take-ownership-of-entire-hard-drive-in-windows-7.pdf
This is a tutorial for Win 7. Yet, the process should be similar to this one on different OS versions.

In case the issue persists, you can boot(don't install the OS, just boot) Ubuntu from a flash drive or a CD, access your old OS drive and transfer all the data that you need to your new one. After that, you can reformat the drive and switch back to Win.
Thread on Ubuntu Live CD: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD

 

[CalvonVo0]

Hello,
Go try to connect this external drive to another computer and see whether it is still inaccessible.
NO matter how it shows there, hope you can save drive file backups elsewhere to avoid external HDD data loss troubles.

 

[Pizamotas]

I couldn't boot off of it because it had my malfunctioning graphics card drivers on it and trying to boot with it inside my computer would just give me a BSOD .

I couldn't find a way to take ownership of it.

Just unplugging and plugging it back again solved the problem for me.