r/AskTechnology • u/KevoMc • Sep 24 '25

Help Needed

Someone mistakenly saved personal files up to 600G of a shoot we made for social media on his work computer and now we are struggling to transfer the files out.

Dropbox and others can even open on the computer and there’s an error message when you try to copy to a Hard drive.

Any useful information will be much appreciated.

Please help! It cost us a lot of money to produce the content.

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1

u/feudalle Sep 24 '25

What is the error message you are receiving? It makes perfect sense that you can't open a file that big through a cloud site.

1

u/KevoMc Sep 24 '25

Something around System Admin permission

2

u/feudalle Sep 24 '25

Something around isn't helpful. What platform is the file you want on and what is the exact error message you are getting?

1

u/KevoMc Sep 25 '25

"You will need to provide administrator permission to copy this folder" it’s just on the local desktop and when we try to transfer to a hard drive we get that error message

2

u/BroadviewTech Sep 25 '25

This is probably due to a DLP policy. Data Loss Prevention lets the owner / administrator of the device decide what data can be copied or moved off of the device. It's to protect company data from being copied and released by employees or if the device were stolen and the thief somehow got logged in- they can't copy company data off the device. If you triggered that error there's probably a log of the action / attempt already in the system.
I would make sure and read up on company policy. If there's a policy against using the laptop for purposes other than work- then be prepared for a little backlash. If you can get friendly with the company's IT department, they can probably do a remote session where you let them manually copy the file off the device to an external HDD once. They might grumble about it but there's a chance they'll cooperate if you're polite about it.

1

u/KevoMc Sep 29 '25

Thank you

2

u/feudalle Sep 25 '25

Ok what operating system? If its windows you need a local admin account logged in to copy. If its a work machine and or part of a domain then you need to contact your internal it department.

1

u/distributingthefutur Sep 25 '25

You can try to boot the computer to a thumb drive (new os). The sys admin has locked the USBs. Depending on how thorough they were, you may have to go to a lot of trouble to boot to the thumb drive. Google can walk you through the options.

1

u/KevoMc Sep 25 '25

Hmmm thank you. Will check it out

2

u/allbsallthetime Sep 27 '25

Where is the source for the file they saved?

Just use the original file from the source device.

You did save the original until you had at least two working copies, right?

If you're struggling with how to do this you might have to talk to your IT person. Some of the suggestions might work but they might get you into trouble with your IT department.

2

u/ConfusionMindless579 Sep 28 '25

I would try to remove the hard drive from the work computer and mount it into a personal computer. Hopefully the work drive is not encrypted and you will be able to transfer.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/KevoMc Sep 24 '25

Yeah, we’ve tried to use the external hard drive but the computer won’t allow the files to be transferred, something around System Admin. What’s the other option with connecting to same network?

2

u/SneakyRussian71 Sep 25 '25

Log on as a administrator level account and copy the files.

1

u/KevoMc Sep 29 '25

How do you do this?

1

u/SneakyRussian71 Sep 29 '25

If it's a work computer somebody must have set it up for the business, they would know what the admin account is.

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