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

[ffutures]

I was logged in as admin and it was refusing to let me access the documents directory on that drive at all, unfortunately.

Still haven't tried to read it with my mac since I've been very busy, but that's the next thing I'll try. The other possibility is to boot my windows box off the old drive, but I suspect that it won't be very compatible with my current hardware, the old windows box dated from 2012-ish.