copying data from several HDD

[mda99das]

I'm having a clear out and I have data from 4 hard drives that were windows 7 and 10 that I would like to get back.

The data is is the c:\users drive and things like photos and documents etc, not the other stuff.

I am not sure what I have done but I have messed up the permissions (think I did it on a windows 7 PC trying to assign permission on a windows 10 drive) I get the access denied error.

Is there a USB flash drive available that ignores all the windows permissions and lets me freely copy data using something that resembles a file manager and shifts folders from 1 drive to another.

Plan is to shift the smallest amount of data on one of the drives to another drive as an interim. Then format the first drive, and use that to store the data across the rest of the drives so the data is on 1 drive. Then clone that so at least I have a backup.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Adduxi]

Use a Linux bootable stick and put the HD's in a USB enclosure.  Copy away to your hearts content.

[Client62]

https://www.kaspersky.com/downloads/free-rescue-disk

[mda99das]

I'm not aufait with Linux but I suppose something that has a gui after loading up from a USB that allows you to drag and drop should be fine. I have no clue about command lines for Linux so it will have to be GUI, something that resembles file explorer. Do you have any suggestions?cheers

[Client62]

Both Linux and Free Rescue Disk have a GUI desktops and file explorers.