Windows 10: advanced security settings owner account unknown

After my computer died I removed the C drive and installed it my new computer which already had a C drive as K drive

- I mainly wanted to access data files that were stored on that computer since the new computer had Windows 10 installed.


Today I tried to access K:\Users\Tom\My Documents and got this BTW I am Tom

Location is not available

K:\Users\Tom\My Documents is not accessible

Access is denied





I did right-click Properties Security and it looks like the owner is Account Unknown probably me when it was C drive on the old computer





There are many directories like this although many that open without a problem.

The funny part is that I have grayed out check marks indicating that I have full control.

- I assume that they are grayed out because "I" am not the owner.


I have tried the following:

Advanced security settings I clicked on Owner Change





and that leads to this





I Clicked OK but got the same Access denied.


How do I fix this?

Is there a way to fix it for the entire drive or do I need to do it directory by directory?


Thanks in advance for any advice.

:)

 

Unknown User as Owner

Hi Bree, thanks for stepping up to address this issue.
As far as I know my External Drive has only been used on my PC.

I could try to implement your suggestion and take Ownership of those Folders.
The "Take Ownership" link is present in my right click menu, but I'm currently logged in with my Microsoft account, so perhaps it would be better if I went Properties --> Security --> Advanced & set the Owner to Administrators, no?!

Although my mind is bugged with a new question now.
If I change the Owner & later on I have to restore a backup (Acronis on a CD) won't I encounter problems then?

 

Unknown User as Owner

Hi guys, I have a peculiar issue with an unknown Owner of a folder.
To be more precise, its on my external Drive, in a folder called My Backups.
I use Acronis on a disk to perform backups. Acronis is not installed.
Path: ‪L:\My backups\Windows 10 Pro (C)
Owner: S-1-5-21-4052398736-303783888-1690356549-1002





I entered "net users" in cmd.exe & the above account is not listed there.
I have a built-in Administrator-, Guest-, Default-, WDAGUtility- and my current account.





The above Owner number does not appear in Regedit either.





Nor does it appear in Computer Management --> Local User Groups...

So who could this be, and is it safe to set it as a member of Administrators?

Ok, slight change of plans. I was going to post the above when I did a closer inspection of other folders & files in L:\My backups. ‪L:\My backups\Recovery Partition has yet another unfamiliar Owner!





Owners of the 5 backup folders:
‪L:\My backups\Data HP (E): Administrators (HP-PAVILION\Administrators)
‪L:\My backups\FACTORY_IMAGE (D): Administrators (HP-PAVILION\Administrators)
‪L:\My backups\Recovery Partition: S-1-5-21-2524673758-597247510-780583039-1001
‪L:\My backups\Windows 7 Pro: S-1-5-21-4052398736-303783888-1690356549-1002
L:\My backups\Windows 10 Pro (C): S-1-5-21-4052398736-303783888-1690356549-1002

So I have to ask again, who could this be, and is it safe to set them all as a member of Administrators?

 

Unknown User as Owner

In a Command Prompt the command DIR /Q will show the owner of a file or folder. Unknown owners are indicated by ...

Add the /S option and it lists the contents of sub-folders too. You could filter the results for the string "..." by piping the results to FIND.

DIR /Q /S | FIND "..."

Note that for an external HDD that's regularly used on multiple PCs there may be some owners that this PC doesn't recognise (but that exist on one of the other PCs).