External Hard Drive: "Access Denied"

[BobSchaffer]

IF anyone could help me out with this - I'd really appreciate it.

Here's the situation:

I backed up my Compaq Presario Laptop using an external hard drive enclosure (USB enabled) onto a 60 GB Toshiba Hard Drive. I successfully backed up all 58GB of data from my laptop and unplugged the external enclosure.

I took the Compaq into a vendor for a system board problem and received a loaner laptop. When I went to retrieve the data off of the external hard drive, there was a problem. The last directory I backed up (of course, the most important and biggest directory) currently is listed as empty...

So, some pertinent facts:
1) I forgot to click "Safely remove hardware" when I was finished copying data into this directory.
2) The directory, when gliding the mouse over it, claims to be empty.
3) When I click on the directory, it says access is denied.
4) When I click properties on the external hard drive, the size of the used space and size of the free space looks like everything is correct (meaning that the 33GB directory ISN'T empty)...
5) When I click on properties of the directory in question, it does say that it has 0 files and 0 folders.
6) When I click on every other directory on the external hard drive EXCEPT the directory in question - it says that it is about 27GB - meaning, the other 33GB is there somewhere, I just can't access it.
7) When I try accessing it through the command prompt (using DOS commands), it simply says that "Access is denied"

Thanks for ANY help!!!

[snowmonkey]

You need to take ownership of that drive before you could access it now.... here is how:

http://www.le.ac.uk/cc/dsss/docs/acls2.shtml


Cheers

[BobSchaffer]

This doesn't seem to be the problem (unless I REALLY don't understand things) because (a) I don't have XP Professional (thus, I can't find the option under the "View" tab in the Folder Options and (b) I can access all other files. There's only one directory that looks "empty"

I think this is more complicated than that.

Thanks for any help that anyone can provide.