My Passport 500GB drive: Access is Denied message when I plug it into another computer

[DonaldC]

Hi there,

I have a WD My Passport Essential 500GB external USB hard drive. I have been using it to back up files on my laptop for a few months. Now, I have a new laptop, and I am going to use the My Passport drive to transfer files from the old laptop.

When I plug the MY Passport into my old laptop, I can access it through drive G: in windows explorer -- it looks like a regular drive. However, when I plug it into my new laptop, it shows up as drive E: and when I double click on the E: drive, I receive a popup saying: "E:\ is not accessible. Access is denied."

Note, I actually have two new laptops (one windows XP and one Windows 7 64-bit ) and my old laptop is Windows XP.

Why? Seems like there's a problem here.  

Please help!!

Cheers,

Don

[DonaldC]

Well, I figured it out on my own I think.

Apparently the problem has to do with some sort of a permissions problem.

All I want to do is use the WD external drive like a big USB flash drive .. plug it in and copy files to it .. but, alas, it has some security "feature" which assigns permissions and ownership to the drive and folders you copy to it.

So, here's what has to be done as a workaround:

on the computer which shows the "access is denied" message,  follow the directions on this page:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421&Product=winxp

This link shows "How to take ownership of a file or a folder in Windows XP"

you basically do the following steps:

1) Disable Simple File Sharing (Start --> My Computer --> Tools --> Folder Options --> Vew tab --> Advanced Settings --> uncheck "Use simple file sharing" --> click OK

2)  My Computer --> right click on the drive (e.g. F: ) --> Properties --> Security tab --> click OK if security message appears --> Advanced --> Owner tab --> in the Name list, click user name or Administrator --> select "Replace owner or subcontainers and objects" check box --> click OK --> click Yes --> click OK

If this is not right, please let me know.

If this is right, I hope it helps someone else with the same problem

Cheers,

Don

[mhanna618]

THANK YOU -- this was very helpful and I was getting EXTRA frustrated with this issue!!

Thank you for posting this!!
Meghan