Windows 7 Accessing old Documents Folder

[Gesia]

Hey guys,
My windows had crashed pretty bad and since it was cluttered anyway, I decided to make a clean start. since I just bought a new harddrive it seemed like the perfect moment anyway.
So I installed Windows 7 to the new harddrive, leaving the old one with windows and everything, and after all the installation stuff, I wanted to save my Data to my new harddrive, completly format the old one and use it as backup.
Everything went smoothly, but unfortunatly I forgot some rather important documents in my "Downloads" Folder. Now from the new Windows I cant reach them because the access is denied, but the old windows wont boot up...
Also, I can't format the old harddrive, because according to windows its a system partition and they cant be formatted.

Anyone got some solution? Would be greatly appreciated!

 

[strollin]

You need to "take ownership" of the documents folder on the old drive. Here's an MS article on how to do that: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753659.aspx

Once you have the data copied off, you can go into Disk Management and delete the partitions, then create new ones and format them.