Windows 10: Best way to take ownership of a user account on an external drive

Discus and support Best way to take ownership of a user account on an external drive in User Accounts and Family Safety to solve the problem; Something I need to do from time to time is transfer user data from an old Windows computer. I usually put the old hard drive in a USB enclosure,... Discussion in 'User Accounts and Family Safety' started by Victek, Apr 16, 2017.

  1. VICTEK
    Victek Win User

    Best way to take ownership of a user account on an external drive


    Something I need to do from time to time is transfer user data from an old Windows computer. I usually put the old hard drive in a USB enclosure, navigate to the user profile folder properties/security tab/Advanced/, add the admin user on the new PC, give "full control" to "this folder, sub-folders and files" and then wait. This works fine, but often takes a long time because the OS has to change permissions on AppData folders. Since I have no need to access anything in AppData is there a way to avoid this and save time? I just want to get access to the Desktop, Pictures, Music, etc. Thanks for any help with this *Smile

    :)
     
    Victek, Apr 16, 2017
    #1
  2. GREG CARMACK - WINDOWS MVP
    Greg Carmack - Windows MVP Win User

    accessing photos

    Are you running an Administrative account?

    Install the
    Take Ownership Shortcut,

    right click the External drive in File Explorer

    to Take Ownership of all files on it.
     
    Greg Carmack - Windows MVP, Apr 16, 2017
    #2
  3. BULLDOGXX
    BulldogXX Win User
    Access denied folder

    Without knowing what folder you're talking about here's my best guess: If you formatted your portable drive with NTFS, the folders on it belong to the user account that created them. When you move the drive to a different computer, you're trying to access
    them with a different user account. FAT32 doesn't enforce ownership.

    To access your folders on a different computer you have to take ownership of them from an account with Administrator permissions. That's not hard to do, but when you move the drive back to the original computer you'll have to take ownership back. Gets tedious
    after a while.

    That's one of the reasons portable drives usually come formatted with FAT32.
     
    BulldogXX, Apr 16, 2017
    #3
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Best way to take ownership of a user account on an external drive

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