accessing data on a hard disk from another laptop?

Question

My laptop stopped powering up and there was no battery left. It happened while I was gone to lunch for an hr or so. Any ways, I bought an external enclosure for my 2.5 hard drive in my laptop hooked it up to another laptop and could successfully see the drive over USB. How ever, the most important folder for me is F:\Documents and Settings\myusername which is now inaccessible. On my old laptop this was nothing but C:\Documents and Settings\myusername. I need to access the desktop folder beneath it, which has more folders in it that has important data on it. As of now it shows inaccessible, 0 bytes and read only in properties. The drive was on a laptop with win xp sp2 with NTFS. Any pointers on how to access it will be much appreciated.

Thanks

I have tried using more than one power adapter and plugged it into different jacks. It didnt work. Thats why I ended up with the other solution of accessing the data from the USB enclosure.

I dont think the BIOS will allow me to boot from the USB. Any way I will try that and let you know how it works.

Yeah! I tried booting from the external drive and unfortunately I dont get to boot it. It tries to boot and then gives me options like safemode, safemode with networking, safemode with command prompt, safemode with networking, last known best configuration and boot windows normally. I tried every option and most of them ended up in blue screen of death or just tries to reboot. I even tried setting up a user account with the same name and password and tried to access it. I can't still access it. I feel like I am running out of options here. Any more ideas?? Please??

This worked out for me

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421/en-us

Thanks for your help guys..

Answer 1

1st answer is a good one. if it isn't possible to boot from the external disk, you have to create a new user account on that other laptop with the username that is on the external disk. then you have to reboot and login with your username.

Answer 2

Hi Does your laptop allow you to boot from another HD in BIOS? If so, boot from the external drive. The external drive has a bootable OS and this is why you cannot access your file. That file is special.

Answer 3

windows XP and NTFS have encryption (security features) that make it difficult to read data on a hard disk from another computer.

Why not just charge your battery? Or plug it into the wall... theres a good chance that someone elses Laptop power adaptor will work with your computer too, Especially if its the same brand. (thats if you forgot yours at home or something)