Accessing old Win 10 drive in new Win 11 PC

[Walt34]

I have two hard drives from my old PC, a Dell Studio XPS – something, and I’m having difficulty gaining access to the main hard drive (haven’t tried the 2nd one yet, it’s minor anyway) for some documents that I forgot to retrieve before shutting it down forever. That was an issue – it wouldn’t start up again and is now at the recycling center. Anyway, the new PC is a Dell XPS 8960 that so far has been a peach, but I can’t access the former PC’s hard drive. I know it has to do with changing the permissions on it, but every source I’ve looked at either isn’t clear, or simply. Does. Not. Work.

It would score major bonus points with DW if I were able to retrieve the documents that are important to her but she forgot to tell me to get before closing out the old system.

I have a USB enclosure to put the drive in, and I can see it all right, but it won’t give me access to the directories (folders) on it.

Can anyone direct me to a source that has directions, in exacting, excruciating detail, leaving out NOTHING, how to access a Windows 10 drive from a Windows 11 machine?

Absent that my next step is to simply take a large hammer to the drive and beat it to death in revenge.

 

[joesxm3]

Make sure you are logged on with an account that has administrator privileges.

 

[jim584672]

You probably need to boot into a live linux environment and change the drive flags / permissions. Download the .iso and make it a bootable USB with a program called Rufus that transfers the .iso to the USB. Once this is finished insert the USB, restart, hit ESC or F9 on the boot to get to the BIOS and select the boot disk as the USB. It will boot into the live environment. Most distros have live environment isos with tools for managing partitions and data. If this is all gibberish to you it might be best to ignore what I just typed.

 

[Walt34]

Make sure you are logged on with an account that has administrator privileges.

Yes, I have been doing that. Re the Linux suggestion, I haven't played with that for 20 years so I probably shouldn't mess with it.

 

[target2019]

Was your original login same as this? How about hers?

 

[GenXguy]

You said you can't access, but what actually happens when you TRY to access??

I've done this sort of thing often (although not with Win 11 specifically) and haven't had any issues - always logged in as a local admin account.

 

[Walt34]

Was your original login same as this? How about hers?

It has never prompted for a login as an external drive, which of course I know if it wanted one. We both used the same drive; I'd tried separate drives, but then what she wanted was always on "my" drive so I gave up and just shared the same one with her. That just made everything easier.

 

[target2019]

It has never prompted for a login as an external drive, which of course I know if it wanted one. We both used the same drive; I'd tried separate drives, but then what she wanted was always on "my" drive so I gave up and just shared the same one with her. That just made everything easier.

I was asking about your account login on old vs. new machine.

 

[Walt34]

You said you can't access, but what actually happens when you TRY to access??

I've done this sort of thing often (although not with Win 11 specifically) and haven't had any issues - always logged in as a local admin account.

That's what I've done, logged in as administrator, then try to access the drive and I get "you don't have permission to access this drive". Pressing the "continue" button just closes the little window. When I search for a solution I get suggestions to right-click on the drive, then "Properties" and then go to the "Security" tab, then "Advanced", then click the "change" link, then add "Users". But it doesn't work. Multiple sites are relatively consistent in what to do with some variations that I assume are for different Windows versions (screen captures they show seem to support that) but none of the suggestions I've come across actually grant access.

 

[Walt34]

I was asking about your account login on old vs. new machine.

No, those are different. Why would that matter? I'm administrator on this machine (and the old one as well).

 

[rk911]

What are the permission settings on the old drive?

 

[Walt34]

WhooHoo, I found it! This guy goes farther and deeper into the description and showing what to do than any other "solution" that I found. No one else went far enough. The description I needed was from the beginning to 2:55 and it is NOT a simple one, at least to me. And this was on a Windows 10 machine.

After 2:55 he goes farther into some other methods and some other information that I didn't really need, the first part was enough.

 

[GenXguy]

Good to hear you figured it out. I did remember I had to work through some access issues with certain apps being able to access folders due to app & browser security, but that only became an issue when I enabled the security features.

 

[donheff]

YouTube has been my savior many times. I am often amazed that anybody knows all this arcane stuff, let alone creates videos on it.

 

[Walt34]

YouTube has been my savior many times. I am often amazed that anybody knows all this arcane stuff, let alone creates videos on it.

Same here more than once. A memorable time is when I was about to scrap a non-functioning washing machine and was able to fix it with a $12 part, including shipping.