Permissions/Access to Retrieved Files - Windows 10 - WD My Passport Ultra

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for Windows
1

My laptop died and I bought a new PC and retrieved my documents and files from my WD My Passport Ultra. My new PC is a Windows 10 machine. When I try open a .jpg file I get a message that I “don’t have permission to view this file”. When I try to open an Excel file I get a message “Excel cannot access. The document may be read-only or encrypted”

I’m looking for help. I’m assuming its a Windows 10 access or permissions issue. I don’t know how to fix.

Please Help! Thank you WD Community.

2

Hi @joseamans, the error sounds like your new computer doesn’t have proper security access to the drive. It doesn’t sound like an encryption issue, as you’re able to see the files exist.

You can check security for one of these files by right-clicking it, pulling up the Properties, and then going to the Security tab. If you see your computer account name on the top list, click on it and see what Permissions you have in the bottom. You can click the Edit button to change this, giving yourself “Full control” for the file. If this works for a single file, you can select everything in the main folder on your drive and do this for everything at once, although it could take some time to process.

If you don’t see your name on the list, you can add it in the Edit menu and then proceed as mentioned before. Or, you might want to go into the Advanced options in Security and see who the Owner is, which might be a name or some random string of characters (Windows way of identifying your old laptop’s user) and change the owner to yourself, which should give you full rights.

3

I am having a similar problem. I retrieved my backed up files to a new Windows 10 laptop, but accidentally retrieved them to “the same location” not knowing any different. I can see all the files but cannot open or even delete any of them. I was going to delete the entire set of backup files from the new computer and start over, but it won’t let me delete them. It also won’t show me the properties when I right-click a file.

How can I undo what I did and start over?