Permissions on external NTFS hard disk

[Rich Pasco]

How are permissions handled on an external NTFS hard disk?

By default, the external disk I use for backup allows "Everyone" to
have "Full Control." I presume that if a thief attached it to another
machine, he would have full access to its files there too.

Suppose I restricted access permission to "Administrators." If a thief
took it and attached it to a machine of which he was Administrator,
then would he then have full control?

Suppose I restricted permission to my own account, say "Rich Pasco."
Could a thief still gain gain control by attaching it to a machine on
which he was Administrator, then creating an account "Rich Pasco" on
that machine? Would he then have full control?

On a related question, what permission level must a file or folder
have so that a service running in the background (not part of any one
user's account) can still access it?

Is there a tutorial article that explains all this?

- Rich

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

How are permissions handled on an external NTFS hard disk?

By default, the external disk I use for backup allows "Everyone" to
have "Full Control." I presume that if a thief attached it to another
machine, he would have full access to its files there too.

Suppose I restricted access permission to "Administrators." If a thief
took it and attached it to a machine of which he was Administrator,
then would he then have full control?

Suppose I restricted permission to my own account, say "Rich Pasco."
Could a thief still gain gain control by attaching it to a machine on
which he was Administrator, then creating an account "Rich Pasco" on
that machine? Would he then have full control?

On a related question, what permission level must a file or folder
have so that a service running in the background (not part of any one
user's account) can still access it?

Is there a tutorial article that explains all this?

- Rich

If someone has physical access to your disk then he can read it
after seizing ownership of its folders. To prevent this, you must
encrypt the data, which will cause huge problems when (not if!)
you lose the encryption key.

You must give full access to the System account in order to
enable a service to access these folders.

 

[Rich Pasco]

Thank you.

- Rich