Problems Upgrading from Vista to 8.1

Hercules1946

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When my computer stopped working while I was doing a clean install of 8.1 onto a new SSD, I had to send it back to where I bought it. They fitted a new power supply, installed 8.1 on the SSD, leaving my Vista HDD System disk in situ as I asked.
When returned the machine had got some serious damage from being dropped, and it wasn't safe to power up. By this time, I was desperate to get some files from the HDD that I hadn't backed off. I bought an enclosure, and connected up the HDD to my wife's laptop. The drive powered up OK, and at first told me that I didn't have authorities to the files I wanted. It offered to fix this, and processed away for a while and then added the extra drives (the HDD has 3 partitions, 1 being the Vista system partition).
To my surprise although I could recognise parts of the file structure, some parts seemed to be completely missing, and other parts I didn't recognise.
Bearing in mind that Im only looking for data files, I cant understand this.
Is it because using a different Op system on the laptop (W7) doesnt allow me to see the file structure put in place by Vista, but does something different with it?

I would appreciate any help. The machine has now gone off for repair, and Im hoping there will be a way for me to get at my files when its fixed.
If Ive left anything out, please ask.

Thanks
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Vista, Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom by Arbico Compters - London
    CPU
    Intel I7 Core 2 Quad 920 2.66Ghz 8MB L2 Cache
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-EX58 UD3R
    Memory
    6MB Corsair PC12800 DDR3 1600MHZ
    Graphics Card(s)
    XFX Radeon HD 4890 1GB PCIE
    Browser
    IE9, Mozilla Firefox
    Antivirus
    Norton Internet Security
You can not upgrade Vista to windows 8.1..
Although it appears that is not what you did, because you installed clean to SSD..

The drive powered up OK, and at first told me that I didn't have authorities to the files I wanted. It offered to fix this, and processed away for a while and then added the extra drives (the HDD has 3 partitions, 1 being the Vista system partition).

Not sure what you allowed to happen there.. But it is possible the vista HDD did have 3 partitions..

But not sure what you mean - by file structure.. Could you post a pic of what you are looking at..
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 3.1 > Windows 10
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS 8700
    CPU
    I7
    Memory
    24 GB
Installing Windows 8 on a Vista Machine

Hello KYHI and thanks for your response.
Sorry if I confused things by using the term upgrade. A clean install of Windows 8.1 has been done on the (empty) SSD, with the intention of leaving the HDD as is. The idea was to allow me to boot either from the SSD (W8) or the HDD (Vista) and also enable me to access my files from the HDD when Im booting to W8.

The HDD came with 2 partitions set up by Arbico, who supplied my machine
Drive C: Bootable partition for Vista
Drive D: The remainder of the 1TB total Storage.

When I decided to move to 8.1, I intended to try doing it in a separate partition on the HDD, so I used a utility to create a third partition (F:) on the HDD and rearranged the sizes to approx 1/3 of 1TB to each
partition. This worked fine and everything was running OK. I then decided to abandoned the idea of using partition (F:) for 8.1 and buy the SSD for this instead.
Whilst Arbico were fitting a new power supply after it failed, they also installed 8.1 to the SSD and returned the computer. The damage it sustained prevented me from powering the system up, so I bought the enclosure in order to connect the HDD to my wife's laptop and try to copy/paste the data files I needed onto the laptop.
There are 2 of these but I couldn't find either of them in the file structure shown for any of the partitions for the HDD. I could see enough to recognise the partitions, and I found the correct folder for one file but the file wasn't listed. I think that the problem must be that the granting of authority to the files is causing this and maybe some are being left out of the list.

I hope this clarifies what I meant by file structure, namely that the hierarchical structure of the folders shown in the view through the laptop was not the same as shown when running normally in Vista and I didn't understand that. (Boot) Partition 1 looked OK, but Partition 2 had a totally different arrangement, with many folders missing. Partition 3 was empty as expected.
Im afraid I can't show you anything as Arbico wanted to collect the computer straightaway and its gone back now. I think that I will just have to wait for it to be fixed and hope there is a way to access the files then.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Vista, Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom by Arbico Compters - London
    CPU
    Intel I7 Core 2 Quad 920 2.66Ghz 8MB L2 Cache
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-EX58 UD3R
    Memory
    6MB Corsair PC12800 DDR3 1600MHZ
    Graphics Card(s)
    XFX Radeon HD 4890 1GB PCIE
    Browser
    IE9, Mozilla Firefox
    Antivirus
    Norton Internet Security
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