Question about booting from external HD

sjshaw

Member
Feb 5, 2001
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Hey guys, if any of you can give me a tip here, I'd appreciate it. Google provided no assistance.

I have an Inspiron 8600 lappy. I also had a desktop machine. Both run XP Pro. I took the HD out of the desktop and put it in an external 3.25 enclosure and hooked it up to my lappy via USB 2.0.

I want to copy files from my (old) Documents and Settings folder on the external HD to my laptop. However, I get an error message that I cannot access the directory. I imagine I clicked on the option to protect these files (make them usable only by me, not encrypted) when I used the desktop exclusively. As I'm selling the desktop, I need to copy these files.

I pressed F12 on the 8600 to access a boot menu and selected "USB Storage Device." It churned for a bit and nothing happened. The old drive is partitioned C: and D:.

Any ideas on how to copy these files (or the entire C: drive) or successfully boot from this external HD?

Thanks in advance!