Data Recovery Issue In System

I recently had a machine die and am trying to migrate my old data to an external drive, however, many files and directories in my Dirs and Setttings folder will not copy. I get access denied. The most frustrating part of this is the radomness that this happens: some files and dirs copy fine others don't. Those that don't have read-only marked when I go into properties; I uncheck it then apply changes, try to copy and the whole circle starts again.