File System Ownership problems with USB hard drive (Windows 10, Windows 11, Seagate External USB Drive))

Question

I have a Seagate external USB hard drive that I am using to back up photos.

I am having a recurring problem with this drive, that when I use it on a new computer, I get a "access denied" error, that can be fixed by running the takeown command from a command prompt with administrator privileges.

Running takeown is annoying and tedious.

I don't understand what this feature is intended to achieve. It could have been a security gate, but since it can so easily be bypassed (using the takeown command or similar) it is little more than an annoyance for users who should have access and shouldn't have access alike. An inconvenience for good actors that block bad actors entirely is fine. but an inconvenience for good actors that is only an inconvenience for bad actors as well doesn't make much sense to me.

So my questions are:

1. What should I do to opt out of this behaviour permanently. I would like the ownership model of all content (current and future) of this drive to be "if you have possession of the drive, and you've plugged it into your machine, you have full control over all content". How can I achieve this now?

2.What should I do to make sure I don't activate this behavior accidentally on other devices in future?

Answer 1

Hello

The permissions of all the USB drive files have been missing, right? Is there any lock icon in the USB drive (ensure it is not locked by bitlocker)?

I am not sure what is the exact takeown command you have used to take own of all the files.

Please try the following command. In addition to takeown, we could run icacls to assign the permissions at the same time.

takeown **/**R **/**A **/**F foldername

icacls foldername **/grant domain\Administrators:F/**T

If you have got all the permissions, there could be policies or third party usb restriction in the machine. We could try to plug in the usb drive to other machine then check or try different USB drive to this machine to verify this.

If the issue only occurred with the specific usb drive, we may consider to format the drive then check the issue again. Of course, this is the last option and the data in the usb drive could be cleared.