Windows 7 - ignore security when reading external drive

You can use Robocopy in backup mode to copy files that you do not have permission for, but I suspect you will still have to take ownership of the new files.

However, since they will now be on the Sata drive it will not take as long than it would to do it via USB.


OS X has an option to ignore File Permissions on external drives, but Windows is too retarded for such Usability. I hope Windows will prove me wrong in future, because this UAC popups annoys me every time, which escalates in takeown changes for hundred thousands of files, which damages the disc in the long run.

http://www.cnet.com/news/solving-read-only-conditions-for-external-hard-drives/

To prevent such errors from happening, OS X includes a setting to ignore permissions on external drives, so all files on the drive should be fully accessible regardless of their permissions settings.

To set this option for external drives, select the drive on your desktop or in the Finder sidebar, and then press Command-I to get information on the drive. In the information window that pops up, go to the Sharing section and click the lock to authenticate. Then check the box to "ignore ownership on this volume," or toggle it off and then on if it's already enabled.

For Windows, there is AccessGain: http://www.hobeanu.com/accessgain/

It's basically a driver, which just ignores the NTFS file permissions.


No, there is no way to ignore NTFS permissions.


The best you can get is to change all permissions for the drive and all its contents. At least in XP there are two options:

  • Inherit from parent the permission entries that apply to child objects
  • Replace permissions on child objects

If you enable both once, then the permissions of every "child object" (file or folder) will be replaced with "Inherit from parent".

The first change may take a long time, but further ones should be really fast because only one object's (drive root) permissions will need to be changed - files inside will have "inherit" set and need no change.