Question Help Recover My Documents

Status
Not open for further replies.
Feb 19, 2021
3
0
10
Hello all. I am in need of assistance.

My old Computer (Dell Inspiron) died. It appears the mother board was.shot. The Old Computer fan spins when booting but nothing loads. I tried disconnecting the hard drives and booting just to see if anything would happen but I got nothing.

As a result I bought a new computer (Dell XPS 8490). When the new computer came I removed the old hard drive and installed it as a second drive in the XPS 8940. I thought I would just be able to transfer the old files that way.

When I booted the computer I think it attempted to dual boot.

I then thought it was best to remove the hard drive and attach via a transfer cable.

I now have the old hard drive attached via a transfer cable and can access the drive like an external hard drive.

In explorer the drive looks kind of funky. It shows up as F: do not use and H: I can see that there is about 75% of the drive used. I can see users and program files.

The issue is that I can't see the my documents folder which contained all the data I want transfer.

I can see all my program files and such.

It is almost like my profile on the old hard drive was overriden by the new profile.

I then tried to disconnect the new hard drive and boot from the old hard drive. The drive came up as non bootable.

Any help would be appreciated.
 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
What OS was the old one? Win 7 or Win 10?
There should be a "Users" directory. Your profile should be under that directory. The documents folder should be under your profile. If you know a file name, go to users and search for that filename.
 
Feb 19, 2021
3
0
10
What OS was the old one? Win 7 or Win 10?
There should be a "Users" directory. Your profile should be under that directory. The documents folder should be under your profile. If you know a file name, go to users and search for that filename.

Both are windows 10. I can find the users but the my documents us empty. Like it is showing the new user profile. When I search for file names I get nothing. I even tried *.pdf to find all odds(like business bank statements for what I am searching for).
 
Feb 19, 2021
3
0
10
H:/Users/<oldaccountname>/Documents/....

There will likely be a permissions issue.
You'll have to go into TakeOwnership to access data in those folders.

There is a folder in users called windows that it won't let me access. I am trying to get access to that now. When I click on it and enable inheritance it says that it is protected
 

jonathan1683

Distinguished
Jul 15, 2009
445
33
18,840
Not sure why there would be a windows folder in your user folder unless your login name was windows lol are you sure they are in there how much stuff is in there? you can try running windirstat on the drive to see where large files are stored or folders using a lot of disk space. When you right click the folder and hit properties is it using a lot of space? You can also try booting up a live linux CD like knoppix which will have less restrictions and copy them on to a thumb drive. Not sure what type of protections is on the files or if they are encrypted.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.