Mounting NTFS volume without permissions on Windows

Is it possible to mount an NTFS filesystem on Windows without permission restrictions?

A typical scenario occurs when you connect a drive containing NTFS partitions from another computer. In this scenario, much of the user content will be inaccessible until you modify the ACLs to give access permissions to your own user's SID.

Windows will offer you to make it permanently accessible, but that causes a lengthy operation that modifies the disk:

I'm curious whether there's a "mount option" to use that'll mark a mounted volume as allowing permissive "everyone" access -- specifically when mounting on Windows (not Linux nor Mac).

Ilya

Posted 2014-01-06T01:09:20.453

Reputation: 1 584

Answers

Nope. You can however take ownership of the file system including all child directories.

You could also attempt to create a user with the same credentials as the owner of the original account that had access to the system although I haven't tested this.

Scandalist

Posted 2014-01-06T01:09:20.453

Reputation: 2 767

1@Scandalist Depends on who "you" is. An admin with access to the disk should be able to do pretty much anything without any limitations. Permissions, IMO, should only be applicable to limited users or on the network. – laggingreflex – 2017-12-14T17:34:27.863

I imagine a recreated user account with have a different ID, wouldn't it? – Michael Frank – 2014-01-06T02:08:49.673

I know that if you are logged in to an account with the same username and password as another account on a different system you will not be prompted for credentials if you attempt to access remote resources on that machine. I would try it. – Scandalist – 2014-01-06T02:10:44.183

ACLs are matched by the SID, so you'd have to recreate an account with the same SID. However, this is not what I asked. – Ilya – 2014-01-06T02:22:49.807

2What good would ACL's and SID's be if you could just mark a volume accessible by everyone. – Scandalist – 2014-01-06T02:26:03.023

Open Task Manager, open the Details tab and find and kill the process explorer.exe.

Next, click the File menu, then "Run New Task." Check the option "Create this task with administrative privileges." Then type in explorer.exe in the "Open" box and click OK.

This will start explorer.exe with an elevated token and will allow you to access most files and folders without issues. If "Administrators" is deliberately blocked from having access, then you will still need to take ownership. But, this is not the case with user profile folders.

Appleoddity

Posted 2014-01-06T01:09:20.453

Reputation: 9 360