Quote from chris_89 on April 1, 2026, 5:29 pm

hey! was the drive encrypted or password-protected on the previous computer?

Quote from bryan on April 1, 2026, 6:02 pm

What exactly does the message say when you try to open it?

Quote from gareth_w on April 1, 2026, 7:08 pm

@chris_89 No, I don’t think so. I never set any password or encryption on it or anything like that. I just used it as a normal storage drive on my old computer for photos and some files. I never installed any WD software either

Quote from gareth_w on April 2, 2026, 8:22 am

@bryan It just says “Access is denied.”

Quote from DataNerd on April 2, 2026, 9:10 am

Hey, welcome! Based on what you've described, this is almost certainly a Windows permissions issue, when a drive is moved from one PC to another, the NTFS file system locks it to the previous user account, which causes exactly that "Access is denied" error.

Here's the fix:

1. Right-click the drive in File Explorer → Properties → Security tab
2. Click Advanced → Change (next to the Owner field)
3. Type your current username, hit Check Names, then OK
4. Check "Replace all child object permission entries" and hit Apply

If you need video guidance, check this one - https://youtu.be/unX03_GOnUA 

That should do it! Let us know if it works.

Quote from chris_89 on April 2, 2026, 9:55 am

@gareth_w

yeah what @DataNerd said should do the trick, just make sure u back up the drive first before touching anything. if something goes wrong while messing with permissions u dont wanna lose those photos.

Quote from gareth_w on April 2, 2026, 10:34 am

Quote from chris_89 on April 2, 2026, 9:55 am

@gareth_w

yeah what @DataNerd said should do the trick, just make sure u back up the drive first before touching anything. if something goes wrong while messing with permissions u dont wanna lose those photos.

Really? How can I do it?

Quote from chris_89 on April 2, 2026, 10:45 am

@gareth_w

If the data on the drive is important, I’d actually start from the recovery first, before trying to fix anything in Windows.

Even if you get the external hard drive access denied message, recovery tools can often still read the disk directly because they don’t rely on the normal Windows permissions system.

What people usually do in this situation is:

1. Install a recovery tool on a different drive (not the WD one).
2. Create a sector-by-sector image of the external HDD.
3. Scan that image and recover the important files to another disk.

Tools like Disk Drill can open the drive in raw mode and read the data even when File Explorer refuses access.

Quote from OhioTom on April 2, 2026, 12:19 pm

@gareth_w If the permissions fix doesn’t work, the next thing I’d try is doing it from the command line. Sometimes Windows refuses the GUI change but the terminal commands still reset ownership correctly.

Open Command Prompt as Administrator and run these (replace the drive letter if needed):

takeown /f X:\ /r /d y

icacls X:\ /grant %USERNAME%:(F) /t

icacls X:\ /inheritance:e

That basically forces Windows to transfer ownership of everything on the drive to your current user account and restore full permissions.

After that, unplug the drive, reconnect it, and try opening it again.

Quote from phillyjohn on April 2, 2026, 3:38 pm

I ran into a similar situation with my external drive once. Windows kept showing an external hard drive access denied message and nothing would open, even though the drive appeared normally in File Explorer.

One random thing that actually helped in my case was changing the drive letter. I’m not sure why it worked, but after that the drive started opening normally.

What I did:

1. Press Win + X → Disk Management
2. Find your WD My Passport in the list
3. Right-click it → Change Drive Letter and Paths
4. Select Change and choose a different unused letter

Not saying it’s guaranteed, but it’s a quick thing to try and it doesn’t modify the data on the drive.

Quote from DataRecoverExpert on April 2, 2026, 3:42 pm

@gareth_w You’ve already received good suggestions in this thread. Since the common fixes (permissions change, command-line ownership reset, and drive letter change) were already mentioned, I’ll add a couple of other things worth checking that sometimes cause the external hard drive access denied error.

Sometimes Windows throws the same “Access is denied” message when the file system has logical errors. You can run a disk check:

chkdsk X: /f

(Replace X with the drive letter.)

Just a note: CHKDSK modifies the file system, so it’s better to recover important data first if possible.

Also, occasionally Windows mounts the volume incorrectly. Opening Disk Management and re-initializing the connection (without formatting) can help the system mount the volume correctly.

We actually have a detailed guide that explains the whole process and the possible causes of this error: https://7datarecovery.com/blog/external-hard-drive-access-denied/

Quote from gareth_w on April 2, 2026, 5:01 pm

The permissions stuff didn’t end up fixing it for me. I still kept getting the same message.

I followed the suggestion about backing up the data first and used Disk Drill to scan the drive. Luckily it found my photos and I was able to recover them to another drive.

After that I ran CHKDSK on the WD drive and that finally fixed the issue. Now it opens normally again.

Really appreciate all the help here 🙌