Accessing windows 10 files on a second hard drive

Running win 11 which is up to date and running fine. What I want to do is search for a folder residing on a win 10 spare copy of a complete operating system (laptop) which is plugged into a USB port on the win 11 machine. The folder will be sitting on the win 10 desktop. Just unsure of how to locate and copy in over to the win 11 desktop or anywhere else.

Help please.

The drive in a usb enclosure should be visible, but where I feel you may run into problems is with permissions for the file.

First try it the normal way which could possibly work. Plug the usb drive in. Open file explorer and select the usb drive. Browse to its drive letter such as X: and open it. Browse to the following path.
X:\Users\yourusername\desktop and attempt to open the file.
If it opens, COPY the file to external media(flash drive). Disconnect the usb drive and browse to the flash drive letter. Browse to the file, COPY it from there and PASTE it into your new computer location. Make sure it will still open in its new location.

If you cannot open the file it's due to permissions. If that happens, you can attempt to take ownership of the entire drive, the folder, or just the file. Once take ownership is added to the right click menu, you right click on the file/folder/drive, select take ownership from menu. You should then be able to copy the file from that location.

I will use that approach if I'm dealing with a single file or only a few files, but if I have only one viable copy and a file/folder/drive has irreplaceable data, I usually take the 'better safe than sorry' route and recover files outside of Windows. It takes longer but I know I can't screw up ownership. I boot from a live Linux distro usb drive for file recovery since Linux does not care about permissions. Having one of those little puppies on hand has saved my bacon multiple times.

My fault for not explaining properly. The laptop 500 drive is the original ; I have migrated it's contents to a 1 T SSD a couple of months back; kept the original as a backup just in case. I can see all the contents listed just fine, just didn't know where to look on this "F" drive. I will get right on this in a couple of hours as I need a nap (I know ) I am recovering from open heart surgery and I tire quickly. Thanks and I will return.

needlenoses said:

The laptop 500 drive is the original ; I have migrated it's contents to a 1 T SSD a couple of months back; kept the original as a backup just in case. I can see all the contents listed just fine, just didn't know where to look on this "F" drive.

Click to expand...

As you migrated the system then the permissions and ownership should be the same, you should have no trouble accessing your files. I'm guessing you're looking for your user files, if so then they will be in the Documents, Pictures, etc. folders in F:\Users\<your name>.

Sorry had other issues crop up with me. So, I have had no problems getting into ( not F ) H:\users\ me\ documents etc. What I don't know how to do is view the contents of DESKTOP on the drive that was in the laptop. Contents of this particular desktop is the gold I am after. Maybe I can't do that . DESKTOP held a folder with pdf files and a folder for my wife to drop things into.
But where are they held.

Ok, thanks anyway; managed to get in using "enable inheritance ". Files I wanted were not there Afterall. Thanks for the help.

needlenoses said:

DESKTOP held a folder with pdf files and a folder for my wife to drop things into.
But where are they held.

Click to expand...

If you signed in with a Microsoft account, and used OneDrive, then they may be in H:\users\ me\onedrive\desktop.

unfortunately I never used OneDrive up to this point.