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My old laptop died, and I want to copy some files over to my new one, but the permissions are set to be accessible only by my old account. What I have tried:

  1. Connect the old disk to the new laptop via USB enclosure. I will get a permissions error, but I can then take over ownership using administrator privileges and proceed to copy the files. The problem with this is that it takes a very long time to update the permissions of every single file. So while it's fine for one or two files, it doesn't work for something like My Documents (which won't even load).
  2. Swap hard drives and try to boot up the new computer using the old drive. I get a blue screen, probably because Microsoft doesn't want a pre-installed OS to be used on other hardware.
  3. Connect the old disk and run Ubuntu. Since Ubuntu ignores Windows-specific file permissions, this works great, except the fact that it also ignores properties like Hidden and Read-only, which I'd like to preserve.

Is there a better way? I apologize if it's been asked before, but I see a lot of similar questions but none of the solutions solve the issue the way I would like.

Tony
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  • Taking ownership is really the only way. You can use another method because you cannot boot to windows to prepare windows to be booted on new hardware – Ramhound Mar 16 '14 at 08:30
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    I've explained how to take ownership and set permissions for the external drive here: http://superuser.com/questions/659787/reset-file-and-folder-permission-of-external-hard-drive-data-to-default-in-windo/660021#660021 . As an aside, you probably get the blue screen because the processors are different between the old system & the new one. – Debra Mar 16 '14 at 08:57

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