Hard Drive Failure - again!

[Grayone]

My son's hard drive died with all his final year work on it from uni. Of course it wasn't backed up and as his course was 'illustration' it would take hours if not days to replicate the work.

I can see the drive when I put it as a slave on my computer and a number of different folders but I can't access the files in 'My Documents'. I presume this is because he put a password on his drive. Both machines are running Windows XP Home with SP2.

Is there any way of removing, or getting round the password protection; if this is indeed the problem. Having looked at some sites for what it costs for data recovery I don't want to give up without a fight!

[CJ101KT]

We use a system called Ghost which allows us to take an image of the hard drive even if the system files are corrupt. With a Ghost Image created it can be explored using some software and allows us to pull off any documents that otherwise would be lost due to a corrupt file(s). If you are absolutely stuck on this then I can do this for you but last resort as I will need the drive.

I would have thought you could get around the password though. If you must access a file or a folder that you do not have rights to, you must take ownership of that file or folder. When you do this, you replace the security permissions that were originally created for the file or folder.

To take ownership of a folder, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Security tab, and then click OK on the Security message (if one appears).
3. Click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
4. In the Name list, click your user name, or click Administrator if you are logged in as Administrator, or click the Administrators group. If you want to take ownership of the contents of the folder, select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
5. Click OK, and then click Yes when you receive the following message:
You do not have permission to read the contents of directory folder name. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control?
All permissions will be replaced if you click Yes.

Note folder name is the name of the folder that you want to take ownership of.
6. Click OK, and then reapply the permissions and security settings that you want for the folder and its contents.

[Grayone]

CJ101KT

I have left a PM on the basis that the whole ting is a bit too convoluted.. BTW - this might be a time when knowledge is more important than imagination! Sadly Albert Einstein lived before computers...