Windows 2000 encryption help?

So my dad has this old hard drive on which he did some sort of encryption / password protection thingamajig a few years ago in Windows 2000. Well over the past few weeks we've been trying to backup all of our data, and we came across this old hard drive, and we don't know what to do with it.

From what my dad tells me, he used something that was built into Windows 2000, he a created a password for it (which he forgot btw,) and when he tries to access the folders on it now says they contain 0 bytes and I believe their titles are written in green. It never prompts him for a password or anything.

So I was hoping I could get some information about what we're dealing with here and what can be done. Right now the hard drive is sitting in an XP system, and we also have a W7 system available if any of its features can be used to access the files.

 

He encrypted it using EFS. You can read more about how it works here.

My suggestion would be to just securely erase the hard drive and call it a day. If the data hasn't been missed this long, it's probably nothing that will be missed in the future.

EFS was designed to only be accessible by the user account of the computer that created it or those permitted access from the original account. Recovery is unlikely since he didn't take appropriate precautions to backup his certificates.

Unfortunately we cannot discuss the matter of recovery beyond that. Our forum rules prohibit discussion of bypassing security measures.