Unlocking files on external drive in Ubuntu, finding rubbish bin
 

Hi guys,

My pc died, so I've connected the hard drive to my laptop. However, several files (and photos that I want to download) are saying I don't have permission to access or download them. Can anybody give me step-by-step instructions how I can get access/download them?

Also, I want to dig some deleted files out of the hard drive's rubbish bin, but I cannot find it! I've checked the bin files, but they seem to be only full of program files, but not my deleted files...Anyone got any ideas?

Many thanks!

Which file system is used on the drive you want to recover? What type of system are you using to do the recovery?

We don't know what:
- distro
- DE
- file manager

you are using.

Short answer for the file copying is to use the terminal and sudo with cp or rsync or similar.
As for trash depends on (all of) the above.

the drive in question was a windows drive?
you should be able to at least read the files, and traverse the tree like on any linux system.
so, if you can't find something, use 'find'.

If we are talking about a Linux HDD, use your root account (or sudo) to access all the files on it, & the bin/trash is usually a dot file/directory in the users home directory.

If it's a MSWindows HDD, use your root account to search for the users home directory, the trash/bin should be somewhere within their directory, you'll just have to look for it.

Windows does have some security and if the file system is NTFS then you may need to take ownership of those files as an authorised user or the user that owns them.