When I upgrade equipment, like a lot of people, I put the old hard drive into my computer, copy stuff off that I want to keep, and then format it so I can recycle the hard drive for some other purpose. If that's going to be your route, I recommend adding a "Take Ownership" context menu entry.
There's one discussed here and, if I recall correctly, this is the one I actively use:
Leo's version at the post I specifically linked (it has a short 2-line code section starting with @admin) is the nicer of the two methods as it doesn't require changing the registry.
After you have ownership, no more elevation should be required to access that hard drive.