Take Ownership Shortcut

chazcon said:

Brink said:

Hello Chazcon,

OPTION THREE in the tutorial below can show you how to manually set ownership and permission of items.

Take Ownership of file

I would recommend that you create a restore point first. This way if you make a mistake, you could do a system restore to quickly undo it.

Hope this helps, :)
Shawn

Thanks Brink, I'm using a reg tweak (Mark's from these forums) to take ownership. But it's more than that.

Background info: I have (3) computers, work desktop, personal desktop, and a laptop for travel. One has Windows 8 (which is horrible and I will be changing out to Windows 7 this week), the other two Windows 7. I work variously off all three computers. So I use Synchronize It! and sync to a flash drive that I pack around with me.

I've used this 3rd party app and my flash drive system for years. Our company currently does not operate off a MS Exchange server which would make our lives easier, all working off central files but I am working on that.

Anyway, my problem is I'll sync my work PC to my flash drive, go to my home computer, attempt a sync and it won't open some files that have the ownership of my work login and not my personal login. Or, vice versa, i'll work from my home PC and sync, go to the office and I can't access my changed files. It's becoming hell and I'm wondering what has changed recently for me, I rarely had this issue in the past.

I'm scowling at Windows 8 but truly it must be a user issue. One thing I've changed recently is to format my flash drive from FAT32 to NTFS in order to be able to sync my Outlook.pst file, which is very large and over the FAT32 allowable size limit for a single file. I suspect that my flash drive formatted in NTFS now is also carrying over NTFS permissions where it didn't before on FAT32 - does that sound like a possible cause?

Also in Synchronize It! there is an option to 'Copy NTFS Permissions', I'm in a quandry now whether I should or should not be copying permissions.

How I wish I could turn permissions and permission checks completely off! I have the UAC off but that is a separate thing.

Each time I sync I have to go through my files and take ownership, it's a time killer and I have no time to do this.

I'd love to know of a 3rd party app that can manage permissions across all files and multiple computers.

Chazcon,

Yep, if it's NTFS formatted, then permissions will be applied to it as well.

You might give using "Synchronize It" a try without the 'Copy NTFS Permissions' option. It may be replacing any previous permission settings you made for it.

You might also add the "Everyone" group and set it's permissions to "Full Control" to see if that may help.

Brink said:

Chazcon,

Yep, if it's NTFS formatted, then permissions will be applied to it as well.

You might give using "Synchronize It" a try without the 'Copy NTFS Permissions' option. It may be replacing any previous permission settings you made for it.

You might also add the "Everyone" group and set it's permissions to "Full Control" to see if that may help.

Will try those options.

To be clear, if my flash drive is formatted as FAT32, it will basically 'scrub' permissions from files that are copied to it? That is how my syncing 'system' used to work, I seems I didn't have this permission hell when it was formatted FAT32. If that's true I'll go back to FAT32 on my flash drive and use a different solution for my large files that are over the FAT32 single file size limit.

Yep, that's correct.

Hey mate,

It's not going to make any difference other than that folder and it's contents being less secured now that anything running while you are logged on to your account will also have access to it.

If you happen to have a restore point dated right before you did it, then a system restore using it could quickly undo it.

I don't see a need to do a system image recovery unless you just wanted to though.

Screenshot now updated. :)

Quick update: All is well, after going back to a FAT32 format on my flash drive. Also I realize we are able to set a different (larger) file allocation size, so now I have what I needed, a flash drive file sync solution that handles my large files as well, with no NTFS permission hell.

Brink, thank you for your help.

That's great news Chazcon. Thank you for posting back with your results. :)