Hard drive permissions

I have just installed Windows 7 32-bit and i got a new 1TB drive to run it on and i have my old C drive inside and im trying to pull a file from my old C drive onto the new drive that is now currently the C drive but it keeps coming up with i dont have permission to access the files. Im the administrator and i have even turned off administration tools and all this stuff and its still saying it. I have another HD that i used as spare space before i got Windows 7 and its fine with me pulling files and looking at them but not with my old C drive.

Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management

Right click on the drive in diskmanagement, or computer folder - properties - security - advanced - owner - edit - then change owner to yourself.

If your still having problems read the following, as it maybe useful knowledge in any case, even if it isnt relevant.

Move Disks to Another Computer[This topic is pre-release documentation and is subject to change in future releases. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]

This section describes the steps to take and considerations associated with moving disks to another computer. You might want to print this procedure or write down the steps before attempting to move disks from one computer to another.
Backup Operator or Administrator is the minimum membership required to perform these steps.
Verify volume health
Use Disk Management to make sure the status of the volumes on the disks is Healthy. If the status is not Healthy, you should repair the volumes before you move the disks.
To verify the volume status, check the Status column in the Volume List view or under the volume size and file system information in the Graphical view.
Uninstall the disks
Uninstall the disks you want to move using Device Manager.
To uninstall disks
Open Device Manager in Computer Management.
In the device list, double-click Disk drives.
Right-click the disks you want to uninstall, and then click Uninstall.
In the Confirm Device Removal dialog box, click OK.
Remove dynamic disks
If the disks you want to move are dynamic disks, in Disk Management, right-click the disks that you want to move, and then click Remove Disk.
After having removed dynamic disks or if you are moving basic disks, you can now physically disconnect them. If the disks are external, you can now unplug them from the computer. If they are internal, turn off the computer, and then physically remove the disks.
Install disks in the new computer
If the disks are external, plug them into the computer. If the disks are internal, make sure the computer is turned off and then physically install the disks in that computer.
Start the computer that contains the disks you moved and follow the instructions on the Found New Hardware dialog box.
Detect new disks
On the new computer, open Disk Management. Click Action and then click Rescan Disks. Right-click any disk marked Foreign, click Import Foreign Disks, and then follow the instructions on your screen.
Additional considerations
When moved to another computer, basic volumes receive the next available drive letter on that computer. Dynamic volumes retain the drive letter they had on the previous computer. If a dynamic volume did not have a drive letter on the previous computer, it does not receive a drive letter when moved to another computer. If the drive letter is already used on the computer where they are moved, the volume receives the next available drive letter. If an administrator has used the mountvol /n or the diskpart automount commands to prevent new volumes from being added to the system, volumes moved from another computer are prevented from being mounted and from receiving a drive letter. To use the volume, you must manually mount the volume and assign it a drive letter using Disk Management or the DiskPart and mountvol commands.

If you are moving spanned, striped, mirrored, or RAID-5 volumes, it is highly recommended that you move all disks containing the volume together. Otherwise, the volumes on the disks cannot be brought online and will not be accessible except to delete them.

You can move multiple disks from different computers to a computer by installing the disks, opening Disk Management, right-clicking any of the new disks, and then clicking Import Foreign Disks. When importing multiple disks from different computers, always import all of the disks from one computer at a time. For example, if you want to move disks from two computers, import disks from the first computer and then import disks from the second computer.

Disk Management describes the condition of the volumes on the disks before they are imported. Review this information carefully. If there are any problems, this will tell you what will happen to each volume on these disks once the disks have been imported.

If you move a GUID partition table disk containing the Windows operating system to an x86-based or x64-based computer, you can access the data, but you cannot boot from that operating system.

I have windows 7 professional 64 bit, and I am having a permission problem as well. I tried to attach a 2tb hard drive to my system as extra storage, not a replacement, and it says I need more permission. I went in to change the owner and make it so it would allow me to format, but the drive will not let me change the owner. It says I do not have permission for that either. I am the admin on my system. Any ideas? All of my components are very new, it is a gaming pc that I built about 6 months ago.

Just read this from another post :

Got it all figured out. Now I remember way back when I had to do this in XP. The permissions for some reason, you can't just select the drive then add a user and give control to execute, read, write, and so on. You have to do it one at a time from the top down, in hierarchical order. Setting permissions along the way. I can see the old user permission from previous XP as a series of numbers with a question mark. I just added the user I wanted for access to the files and what that user can and cannot do.

So open computer select drive - right click, and select properties - security - advanced - owner - add yourself I guess, and then in effective permissions add your username and select full control.

This maybe a little more than what you did hopefully.

Have you initialised the drive, ie is to say is it a new drive, right click it in diskmanagement and see what options show up - 2 places - where it say disk0 ETC and in the middle - try both places for more options.

I tried everything through the effective permissions but the last part does not seem to stick. The rest does but as soon as I set the effective permissions hit ok and go back through the permission settings to effective permissions they just go back to where they were.

I know this is an old post but I've recently encountered this problem several days ago. ALL of my files are on my external drive and I was denied "permission" to access the files...when I put the ADMIN password in, I could get access to the folder but not the contents...I could not copy or paste or do anything...anyway, I was about to pay someone to remove the files and then I tried scanning the files with my virus protection software. I still had to use the ADMIN password to access the folder but once I scanned the files I was at least able to copy and paste them to my desktop and save from there. If anyone out there is having this issue and just wants to get the files off the external drive, this might help (I've already purchased a new external and after all the trouble I've had this one may well go out the window!)

A month or so ago the drive I had W7 installed on died. Luckily all my files are on another drive. I installed a new drive for W7, installed, then plugged in the drive with my data.

I have "taken possession of the drive useing these instructions cited from above:

whest said:

Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management

Right click on the drive in diskmanagement, or computer folder - properties - security - advanced - owner - edit - then change owner to yourself.

But no matter what I do, whenever I go to any folder on the disk and check the properties, the folder is read-only. What else do I need to do to get past this hurdle?

Hello, I experience the same files and disk issues discussed on this thread. At some point I was able to copy some files (ie itunes) but was not able to start the itune app due to file permission (needed write permission). Another situation was I could not see any of the folders on the attached external drive.

I followed the similar steps above, ie getting the administrator full control but noticed I still did not gain access. One additional (or possibly correct step to check) thing to make sure is that you add your user name to the group.

Select the file or folder or drive properties. Go to the security tab and look at the group or user name field. Generally you should see SYSTEM, <computername>/administrator, and the important one <computername>/<username>.

If you don't see it, please add your username to the list and make sure you assign it w/ full control.
To add a user name click the EDIT button next to the "To change permission, click edit". You should see a new window pop up and below the group list a new button ADD. Click on Add. Another window appears. In the area "Enter the object name to select" please type your User name and click on check names. It should automatically change to <computername>/<username>.
After you add your user name, check to make sure you selected full control to the file or folders (and subfolders if that option was selected).

You should now be able to have full control over the files or disk.

Let's face it. What would have been really useful is a Permissions Migration Tool. When a secondary storage drive or files are introduced to Windows7, instead of just relabeling unknown user permissions with long strings and question marks, the tool could say: "The following files/folders are owned by <?UnknownUserBlahBlahBlah>. Would you like to associate this obsolete user with a user in your Windows7 system?"...then offer the list of currently defined valid users in W7. That tool could then go in and exhaustively revise the corresponding ownership and permissions to be compatible with that new association. Would that really have been so hard?