I recently replaced my old Dell Inspiron desktop with a new laptop that has fantastic specs. I took my old desktop to a repair shop to upgrade the hard drive, but it seems the technician misunderstood my needs. He only backed up my data files to an external drive and transferred them back to the new PC. Now, all my software is missing, and I've spent three days trying to reinstall everything. When I attempt to access the data files (like those for QuickBooks) from the external drive, they can't be opened. I've run diagnostics through the QuickBooks repair tool, but nothing has worked.
I had Carbonite backing up my old PC, so I tried restoring those files, but the process gets stuck at around 56%. I managed to restore a couple of small files, which is encouraging, but I'm still waiting on my Carbonite backups to arrive. I'm also trying to figure out why I can't access my files on the external hard drive. This is my last chance to get my data and computer back on track.
By the way, I reinstalled my old hard drive into the old PC, but I encountered BIOS errors and gave up on that. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
2 Answers
If you're not super tech-savvy, I recommend downloading NTFS Access. It lets you easily grant permissions to folders, including your QuickBooks files. Should help you get back into the files directly! Here's a link: [NTFS Access](https://download.cnet.com/download/ntfs-access/3000-2094_4-10964886.html)
It sounds like your external drive might be formatted with NTFS, which can cause permission issues. If the rights to those files were set for the previous user on the old system, you might not have access to them. You can try taking ownership of those folders to regain access. What does your disk's file system say? You can check it by right-clicking the drive in File Explorer and selecting 'Properties.' Let me know if you need help with that!
I can check that! Can you tell me where to find the properties for the files on the external drive?