i have made a private folder by all but myself and system removed from security permissions and made myself the owner. if i try to access this folder through another os it asks me to take permanent ownership which I suppose will show up as changed owner in permissions right? can ubuntu etc override this without a trace?
Welcome to the Forums, Mumbles!
The problem is, Windows stores file ownership and permissions information in a specific way. Users are identified not by their usernames, but by certain alpha-numeric strings. The registry contains information that relates these strings to actual usernames.
Now, if you try to access a hard drive created in one Windows OS by another - say in a dual-boot scenario, then the second Windows will have no way to translate those user-identifier strings into names, so you will see these strings in explorer if you choose the details view with the owner column present. If you have restricted access to some files and folders by manually editing permissions, then it's possible that access will be denied by the second Windows and the only possibility to access the files would be by taking ownership, which you can do by logging in as an administrator.
Similarly, Ubuntu will be able to edit NTFS permissions. The permissions themselves are not part of the registry, so whatever Ubuntu does will stay with the files. But by taking ownership in Ubuntu, you will deny yourself future access in Windows.
The only way that I know of - and I would be happy to learn a better way - making access possible from all OS on your computer or network is to make the files in question accessible by Everyone. if, however, you really want to restrict access, but then want to be able to open the files in another OS, then you could manually edit permissions using those string identifiers, but this is quite tedious and not worth the effort in most circumstances.
hi there.
thanks for the info.
i share my machine with others at home with multiboot - mine win7, others(2nd HD) win7 and ubuntu. what i really care about is nobody access the folder, and if someone does I be able to know it. you said anyone with ubuntu/any other os will still need to edit the permissions, will the changed owner be visible when viewing permissions in win 7? does the fact that i can still normaly access the folder in my win7 and its permissions unchanged indicate no one has accessed the folder's contents yet?
Well, if others are using different OSs on the same machine, then there is nothing you can do to prevent them from viewing your files, except for encrypting, for example using BitLocker. Then changing ownership will not help them, since they still would need to know your password, and likely Ubuntu will not know what to do with such a file at all.
Now, if someone does access your files by changing ownership, then you can clearly see that - the owner has been changed. I am not sure whether the time stamp will be preserved, i.e. whether the "date accessed" column in explorer will be modified as well, Windows is not very consistent on that one.
So, I would guess that if your permissions are the same, you're still the owner, and nobody in your household has super-hacker skills - then your information should be safe :).
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