Hello and welcome to the forum.
As your new installation of Windows 8 is unaware of the security identifiers that were present on the machine your external hard drive was formerly attached to you may find it necessary to "Take Ownership" of either the files and folders that are causing you problems or the root of the entire drive.
You can grab a copy of the program that will add this ability to the right click context menu from here Add "Take Ownership" to Explorer Right-Click Menu in Win 7 or Vista - How-To Geek
Regards
Randy
Dear Sir
I did install takeownership: However, it didn't seem to work. The files that are Locked remain locked.
If there is a further step I can take I would be grateful for advice please.
Ian
Dear Sir
Dear Randy
Your kind help is most appreciated.
The problem files concerned were actually files I had previously downloaded or created using dvd rip software.
Consequently I finally decided to re-download the files and re-create the iso file.
In this regard I finally deleted the problem files.
Thus, the problem is solved.
However I have had this problem in the past , and it is not always possible to get files lost in this way back.
Therefore, with your kind permission, I have bookmarked this webpage, as I feel it will be invaluable in the future.
For now though
Thank you and kind regards
Ian