How can I recover NTFS files from a hard drive?

S

Shuka

n00b
Joined
Feb 22, 2003
Messages
52
My friends' windows installation is corrupted and he asked me if I could recover some of his documents from the hard drive. I plugged the hard drive into my computer and I can see the files but I can't open them because it says I don't have the user security privileges. Anybody know of a way that I can copy the files to my computer and be able to open them?
 
You need some file recovery software. Search on google for them, most have free trials so you can at least see what it will recover.

I use PC File Scavenger, works best for me.
 
grab a knoppix live cd

knoppix iso page from linux-iso.org

boot with that cd in the drive and get into knoppix. it should give you read only privlages with the ntfs drive and you should be able to burn files to a cd, and/or move them to a fat32 drive which linux can write to. knoppix will NOT write to ntfs unless you want to risk corrupting your own drive, and i dont think u'll wanna do that!! if your not a knoppix fan, try almost any linux live cd, Mephis is another one of my favorites, and it should be able to mount your friends ntfs drive. good luck!
 
You need to take ownership of them.

Right click properties, security, Add your user as one who has full control.
 
Knoppix is a great tool for this. If Fat32 is not available, you can copy the files across a local network to a shared drive of another computer (Fat32 or NTFS). You'd need to have a user called knoppix that can access the shared drive on the second computer. Boot knoppix on the computer with the files to be copied. smbmount the remote share, and copy away.

I setup a custom verison of knoppix that has a smbmounting script. It works like this:

su (become the root user)
mountnetdrive 1 hostname sharename knoppix

It'll spit out info about how to use the script, then it will prompt you for knoppix's password. (ou should set this user on the second computer wuith a password of oclinux prior to running the script.

The shared drive will be mounted to /mnt /netdrive1 on the computer running knoppix. So mount the local hard drive partition(s) and then use the cp command-

cp /mnt/hda1/files/to/be/copied /mnt/netdrive1
 
Why is everybody telling him to take a sledgehammer? Knoppix isn't needed, just an understanding of how NTFS permissions work!

Take ownership of his files, and you'll be fine, unless they are using EFS.
 
Originally posted by Ranma_Sao
Why is everybody telling him to take a sledgehammer? Knoppix isn't needed, just an understanding of how NTFS permissions work!

Take ownership of his files, and you'll be fine, unless they are using EFS.
Click to expand...
another vote for the path of least resistance. this guy is right. you could even take ownership of the files, but that is unnecessary.
 
Shouldn't administrator be able to access everything? Try running as admin.
 
each machine has its own id

on a hd from an old machine, administrator was a weird ass value (looked like a product id) in the security tab but i use the same pw as my ancient machine so maybe thats how i could access the drive

maybe try using his admin pass ?
 
No, just take ownsership of the whole drive. Right click on it, security, advanced, ownership, thne its pretty much self explanitory.
 
Originally posted by ImaRootofALLEVIL
administrator was a weird ass value (looked like a product id) in the security tab
Click to expand...

That number is your Security ID or your Globally Unique Identifier depending on which OS (NT 4.0 or later) you are using. As far as Windows is concerned, that is your id.

That is why you can rename your user account without breaking anything. It just changes the cross reference for your username and GUID to the new username value. It doesn't have to make any changes elsewhere.

If humans remembered 48 byte strings easily, you wouldn't need user names at all. :)
 
Thanks guys, taking ownership of the drive granted me full access to all the files I needed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top