Copying everything off an old HDD to a directory?

[Frank E]

Hi, I have a handful of old HDDs (2G, 8G) which are collecting dust. I want to copy everything from the drives (apps. system, data (if any)) into respective directories on my new archive drive.

I've unchecked " read only" for all files but I still get "access denied" errors.

Is there a free utility I can use to copy things across so I can see what files there are in Explorer. Rather than writing to an image file.

Thanks

[dangel]

It's down to ownership and security in NTFS - you don't 'own' or have permission to access the folders because you/your computer account is different from the machine/user account that created them. If you change the security settings at the top level (root folder) and propagate them down to the sub folders then you'll be able to do what you want.

IF ownership is the only problem then something like this will help:

http://www.intowindows.com/take-owne...drag-and-drop/

But you can change settings by right clicking on the root folder (i.e. the drive) and changing the properties->security etc yourself.

[Frank E]

Thanks.
Drive copied.

[dangel]

good!