Ah ok, with ntfs I'm not aware of a method that will lock the drive down once it's outside of it's conditions.
What I mean is, if u can physically take the drive out and introduce it as a slave to an existing pc, u may have a better chance. Passwords from that point can ~usually~ be bypassed by taking ownership, at administrator level if necessary.
Even whilst in this slave state, u can image it normally. But if u then try introducing an imaged drive back in place of the original, it may complain as the drive id may be part of the process.
I'm assuming here that it's either in a laptop or external drive housing that has it's own bios/section that dictates access rights.