Windows 10: External Hard Drive keeps complaining about permission issues despite being owner of the...

Alright so earlier my external hard drive was having problems reading in File Explorer, so I ran CHKDSK and that solved the problem.

Then when I plugged it into another computer, it started complaining that I needed to scan it to fix an error, so I did that.

Now, on both my laptops, it keeps asking for administrator permission to do darn near anything. Copying files, pasting files, backing up files, accessing folders, it's just annoying.

In fact, these permission issues are making it impossible to play video and audio files off of the drive, in both VLC and the built in media players.

I made sure that I set myself as Owner on both laptops, and I also made it so that everyone has permissions on it, and both laptops are using Administrator accounts, but no matter what I do it complains about admin permissions.

Can someone help me out with this? These permission errors are making it nearly impossible to backup my drive, and I have a lot of important information on it.

If it helps, the laptops are running Windows 10 on one of them and Windows 7 on the other one, however when I use it in a Linux Distro like Ubuntu it reads it just fine and I can do things on it with ease.

I have about 400 GB on the drive so backing up the drive, formatting it, and then pasting the files will take an extremely long time, especially considering the only drive that I have that has enough space to back it up to only supports USB 2.0

:)

 

External Hard Drive

Hi,

Just to verify, did you mean, your back up files used to be on your external hard drive, but now it's no longer there? If this is true, kindly provide more answers to the questions below, so we can further assess the issue:

• When did the files start to disappear?
• What are the troubleshooting steps you have done so far?
• Did you make nay changes on the settings of your PC or hard drive prior to this issue?
• Are you getting any error messages when trying to plug in your external drive?
• Does your external drive shows that the space is consumed?

Please advise. We'll keep an eye out to your response.

 

External hard drive not recognised

Thanks for this. I've done what you suggested and been through all the steps mentioned in the article. The hard drive works fine on a Mac computer, and I've managed to copy the information on it. It must be a Surface issue so I'll try to get a chat line tomorrow.

 

External Hard Drive

Hi John,

We suggest that you try the troubleshooting steps below:

• Open your External Hard Drive file in File Explorer.
• Type the name of the file you want to search on the search box and click Enter.

The file will show up in Search Results and you will be able to move it to the correct folder.

Let us know if you need further help.