Cannot Copy All Files From Hard Disk

[longevity]

I am having a desktop system with Two hard drives running Windows XP SE. Due some unknown reason the system got corrupted and it is completely unusable now. When I contacted Microsoft guys for help they suggested me to reformat the system. That’s fine but I want to copy everything on my both drives including boot disk to the secondary disk before formatting the drive on which Windows is installed.

Now the problem I am facing is when I try to copy files from C: to my secondary disk, using Windows Explorer, it gives me an error message saying “Access denied, can't find file on primary volume, etc.” I don’t know why I am not having access though I am the only Admin of this system. I know there could be permission problem with system files as the data is corrupted but about my documents and all. I am not able to copy them as well.

Can anyone please tell me how can I copy my Data from C drive to another hard drive ? Please help.

[Stel]

If it is not allowing to copy from Windows Explorer, try doing it from Command Prompt. Open a cmd prompt and use Xcopy. There are switches to copy everything. (xcopy /?)

Let me know what happens.

[Chapal]

Just boot your system into Safe Mode by tapping F8 key on restart and copy the documents. You will surely face problem if you are trying to copy sys files.

[longevity]

Thank you very much for the helps guys. Thank you for the suggestion. I will give it a try. As

[GARTH]

Hence you should always keep your important Data apart from C drive and at same place. It makes easier for backup. Anyways, if you are using a default winxp sys then all data should be present under My Documents, Favorites folders and similarly emails are stored somewhere else.