File Permissions?

[ffutures]

When I replaced my Windows box earlier this year I kept the hard drive from the old Windows 10 computer on the assumption that I might at some stage need to access some file or use some software that isn't on the new machine. Documents should have been OK because I did copy everything across. But yesterday this actually came up - I needed a document that I couldn't find, put the drive into an external holder, then discovered that I couldn't get into the documents on the hard drive because it's looking for permissions which are long gone. I'm guessing that if I booted from that drive on a suitable machine I'd be able to read it, but that's not likely to happen.

Fortunately I did eventually find the file on my current PC, I'd been looking in the wrong directory with a slightly wrong file name, but I'm now wondering if there is some way to fix this if it happens again and I really do need to open documents. Any suggestions?

Comments

[dormouse1953]

I got a new desktop machine recently but restored everything from backups on an external drive, which I had no trouble reading.

[ffutures]

That's pretty much what I did, I just want to use belt and braces to be extra sure.