The HDD from the old PC

[Archangelos]

I suppose this is the right forum for this topic, my apologies If I am mistaken.

The story (introduction)
Time came for some colleagues at work to get new computers. WinXP was obsolete by far. A new PC arrived with its own HDD and a not so old OS. The issue is: to transfer the files from the old PC to the new one.

The solved problem
I have a docking station in order to install an internal HDD via USB. The new computer had the C drive inside and the HDD from the old PC as drive D via USB. However, a user with no admin privileges could not get access to the profile folders od the external HDD.
The colleague gave me the HDD (of the old computer) and I connected it (using the docking station) to my PC, where I have admin privileges. Well, everything went well. We got access to all folders, job got done.

The question
A user with no admin privileges could not get access to profile folders even if the HDD was not the primary one.
How does this happen?

My conjecture is that the OS detects the presence of MBR in the external HDD and for that reason it restricts the access to non-admin users.

I wonder whether the purge of MBR could result in unrestricted access to non-admin users.

Any ideas?

 

[mole999]

The basic design is that the data should not be recoverable by non admin, and that the disk would have been known on the domain for admin recovery. Defeats the object if the encryption doesn't hold, that said many programs seem to have work arounds (non of which will be discussed here)