Question Hard Drives from old stored pc's

[Golemofstone]

Hi, So this might be a dumb question but thought i'd ask anyway. I Have 3 old pc's in my loft (2 of mine and one from my son) and before i do a low level format and wipe them clean i'd like to get a few old files/folders off of them. Trouble is i'm not able to do a claim ownership on them for some reason, would this be because there's is a copy of windows on each drive already? (And no i don't remember the PW for them 😖 been in storage for 3-4 years).

I have tried following a few of the YouTube tutorials about claiming ownership of the disks etc but to no avail any help would be appreciated, apologies if there's already been a similar thread on this subject, and Thanks for looking

 

[scout_03]

for the password we could not help forum rules.

 

[Golemofstone]

for the password we could not help forum rules.

So i have lost everything that was on them then ?

 

[popatim]

Password?
Please explain further.

If the drives have a password it usually means they are encrypted and getting ownership of the drives is not going to help you any because that will not decrypt the data...