Hello group,

I´ve switched a few times between XP and Vista, meaning re-installing the
whole system a few times
I´ve got 2 harddisks, a primary for the system and a secondary for data
For a re-installation, I simply format the primary drive and install the OS
as usual

Now I´m having problems with file access from the secondary drive under
Vista
If the secondary disk was formatted under XP, any data stored on it is
protected beyond admin rights, meaning I can´t even edit a .txt file, not
even when logged on as administrator
I can open the file and read it, but if I edit it and try to save the
changes, it says access denied
Sometimes (not sure if always) it won´t let me edit newly created files
either, meaning the creator of the file has no write access to the file, if
the drive was not installed under Vista
Games and applications installed on the secondary drive work fine, but if
they try to save settings or highscores or something in their own folder,
even though the process is owned by the system itself are denied access as
well
I´m also using VirtualPC, where I store the virtual HDD in a file on the
secondary drive, and again, after switching from XP to Vista, I can install
VirtualPC, I can open existing virtualPC´s including their virtual HDD´s,
but if I try to write anything onto the virtual drive, I get access denied

The only way I found, how to get "normal" access to my data is to copy the
entire content of the drive elsewhere, delete the partition(s) from the
drive, create new partitions, format them under Vista and copy all the
content back

Is there a way to set the access rights without this huge detour?

thanks in advance
Thomas

Thomas wrote:
> Hello group,
>
> I´ve switched a few times between XP and Vista, meaning re-installing the
> whole system a few times
> I´ve got 2 harddisks, a primary for the system and a secondary for data
> For a re-installation, I simply format the primary drive and install the OS
> as usual
>
> Now I´m having problems with file access from the secondary drive under
> Vista
> If the secondary disk was formatted under XP, any data stored on it is
> protected beyond admin rights, meaning I can´t even edit a .txt file, not
> even when logged on as administrator
> I can open the file and read it, but if I edit it and try to save the
> changes, it says access denied
> Sometimes (not sure if always) it won´t let me edit newly created files
> either, meaning the creator of the file has no write access to the file, if
> the drive was not installed under Vista
> Games and applications installed on the secondary drive work fine, but if
> they try to save settings or highscores or something in their own folder,
> even though the process is owned by the system itself are denied access as
> well
> I´m also using VirtualPC, where I store the virtual HDD in a file on the
> secondary drive, and again, after switching from XP to Vista, I can install
> VirtualPC, I can open existing virtualPC´s including their virtual HDD´s,
> but if I try to write anything onto the virtual drive, I get access denied
>
> The only way I found, how to get "normal" access to my data is to copy the
> entire content of the drive elsewhere, delete the partition(s) from the
> drive, create new partitions, format them under Vista and copy all the
> content back

You simply need to take ownership of the files/folders.

Check the permissions of the file or folder the file is saved in and
take ownership:

1. Right-click the file or folder, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Security tab.
3. Under Group or user names, click your name to see the permissions you
have.

To open a file, you need to have read permission. For more information
on permissions, see What are permissions?

http://tinyurl.com/2j9vgr

To take ownership of a folder:

1. Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then
click Properties.
2. Click the Security tab, click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
3. Click Edit. Administrator permission required If you are prompted for
an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide
confirmation.
4. Click the name of the person you want to give ownership to.
5. If you want that person to be the owner of files and subfolders in
this folder, select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check
box.
6. Click OK


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

"Malke" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
> Thomas wrote:
>> Hello group,
>>
>> I´ve switched a few times between XP and Vista, meaning re-installing the
>> whole system a few times
>> I´ve got 2 harddisks, a primary for the system and a secondary for data
>> For a re-installation, I simply format the primary drive and install the
>> OS
>> as usual
>>
>> Now I´m having problems with file access from the secondary drive under
>> Vista
>> If the secondary disk was formatted under XP, any data stored on it is
>> protected beyond admin rights, meaning I can´t even edit a .txt file, not
>> even when logged on as administrator
>> I can open the file and read it, but if I edit it and try to save the
>> changes, it says access denied
>> Sometimes (not sure if always) it won´t let me edit newly created files
>> either, meaning the creator of the file has no write access to the file,
>> if
>> the drive was not installed under Vista
>> Games and applications installed on the secondary drive work fine, but if
>> they try to save settings or highscores or something in their own folder,
>> even though the process is owned by the system itself are denied access
>> as
>> well
>> I´m also using VirtualPC, where I store the virtual HDD in a file on the
>> secondary drive, and again, after switching from XP to Vista, I can
>> install
>> VirtualPC, I can open existing virtualPC´s including their virtual HDD´s,
>> but if I try to write anything onto the virtual drive, I get access
>> denied
>>
>> The only way I found, how to get "normal" access to my data is to copy
>> the
>> entire content of the drive elsewhere, delete the partition(s) from the
>> drive, create new partitions, format them under Vista and copy all the
>> content back
>
> You simply need to take ownership of the files/folders.
>
> Check the permissions of the file or folder the file is saved in and take
> ownership:
>
> 1. Right-click the file or folder, and then click Properties.
> 2. Click the Security tab.
> 3. Under Group or user names, click your name to see the permissions you
> have.
>
> To open a file, you need to have read permission. For more information on
> permissions, see What are permissions?
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2j9vgr
>
> To take ownership of a folder:
>
> 1. Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then
> click Properties.
> 2. Click the Security tab, click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
> 3. Click Edit. Administrator permission required If you are prompted for
> an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide
> confirmation.
> 4. Click the name of the person you want to give ownership to.
> 5. If you want that person to be the owner of files and subfolders in this
> folder, select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
> 6. Click OK

Hi, Malke

Would it help to format the data drive Fat32? Would that get around the
permissions problem? And would it cause other problems?

-Paul Randall

Thanks for the answer, even though it doesn´t really help me
The secondary drive is a 500GB harddisk, and it is almost full, over 350,000
files in 100s of folders, where about half of these should be owned by
"system" as they are savegames or saved highscores or user defined settings
of applications and the other half is plain data, such as corel draw
graphics
No way to sort that out one by one, but I guess "system" and "administrator"
is not the same and my standard user is again a different one

I also have an external (USB) harddisk (as backup), where this problem does
not exist, I can access all files there read and (over-) write them without
problems, no matter how often I exchange the OS

Can anyone tell me, how to setup the secondary drive the same way, so that
there is no protection on the files at all and a re-installation or switch
to another OS doesn´t cause problems?
(FAT32 is NOT an option, I have a few files > 4GB)

Thomas


"Malke" <(E-Mail Removed)> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
> Thomas wrote:
>> Hello group,
>>
>> I´ve switched a few times between XP and Vista, meaning re-installing the
>> whole system a few times
>> I´ve got 2 harddisks, a primary for the system and a secondary for data
>> For a re-installation, I simply format the primary drive and install the
>> OS
>> as usual
>>
>> Now I´m having problems with file access from the secondary drive under
>> Vista
>> If the secondary disk was formatted under XP, any data stored on it is
>> protected beyond admin rights, meaning I can´t even edit a .txt file, not
>> even when logged on as administrator
>> I can open the file and read it, but if I edit it and try to save the
>> changes, it says access denied
>> Sometimes (not sure if always) it won´t let me edit newly created files
>> either, meaning the creator of the file has no write access to the file,
>> if
>> the drive was not installed under Vista
>> Games and applications installed on the secondary drive work fine, but if
>> they try to save settings or highscores or something in their own folder,
>> even though the process is owned by the system itself are denied access
>> as
>> well
>> I´m also using VirtualPC, where I store the virtual HDD in a file on the
>> secondary drive, and again, after switching from XP to Vista, I can
>> install
>> VirtualPC, I can open existing virtualPC´s including their virtual HDD´s,
>> but if I try to write anything onto the virtual drive, I get access
>> denied
>>
>> The only way I found, how to get "normal" access to my data is to copy
>> the
>> entire content of the drive elsewhere, delete the partition(s) from the
>> drive, create new partitions, format them under Vista and copy all the
>> content back
>
> You simply need to take ownership of the files/folders.
>
> Check the permissions of the file or folder the file is saved in and take
> ownership:
>
> 1. Right-click the file or folder, and then click Properties.
> 2. Click the Security tab.
> 3. Under Group or user names, click your name to see the permissions you
> have.
>
> To open a file, you need to have read permission. For more information on
> permissions, see What are permissions?
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2j9vgr
>
> To take ownership of a folder:
>
> 1. Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then
> click Properties.
> 2. Click the Security tab, click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
> 3. Click Edit. Administrator permission required If you are prompted for
> an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide
> confirmation.
> 4. Click the name of the person you want to give ownership to.
> 5. If you want that person to be the owner of files and subfolders in this
> folder, select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
> 6. Click OK
>
>
> Malke
> --
> Elephant Boy Computers
> www.elephantboycomputers.com
> "Don't Panic!"
> MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

Thomas wrote:
> Thanks for the answer, even though it doesn´t really help me
> The secondary drive is a 500GB harddisk, and it is almost full, over
> 350,000 files in 100s of folders, where about half of these should be
> owned by "system" as they are savegames or saved highscores or user
> defined settings of applications and the other half is plain data, such
> as corel draw graphics
> No way to sort that out one by one, but I guess "system" and
> "administrator" is not the same and my standard user is again a
> different one
>
> I also have an external (USB) harddisk (as backup), where this problem
> does not exist, I can access all files there read and (over-) write them
> without problems, no matter how often I exchange the OS
>
> Can anyone tell me, how to setup the secondary drive the same way, so
> that there is no protection on the files at all and a re-installation or
> switch to another OS doesn´t cause problems?
> (FAT32 is NOT an option, I have a few files > 4GB)

Thomas, I suspect something else is going on but I really don't know
what. I have used a second internal hard drive for data on all my
machines, including the one where I was beta-testing Vista. For the beta
test I would swap out the master hard drives - one running XP, one
running Vista - all the time, leaving the data drive in place. I never
had an issue with ownership of the files on the data drive from either
OS. That same data drive has also been put into a different computer
running Vista after Vista RTM came out, where it now lives. So I really
don't know why you are having such an issue with ownership. My data
drive is formatted NTFS, too. The only time I format a drive FAT32 is
when it has to work with Linux, but that's not a situation you would run
into.

I also used Virtual PC at one point and always kept my vm's on the data
drive with no issue.

I'm sorry that I was unable to help you. I would suggest that yes, you
do the "huge detour" of copying all your files off onto another hard
drive, format the internal data drive from Vista, and copy at least some
of the data back. Perhaps someone else will have an explanation for you.

Good luck,


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User