Take ownership of folders on old hard drives

If you’re trying to recover files on an old drive, you may find your progress is blocked by an error message telling you that you don’t have the correct permissions to access a folder. This usually happens with personal folders (Documents, Photos, Music and so on) that are locked to another user account. The way round this is to take ownership of the folders so that you can open them and retrieve their contents. Microsoft has made the procedure convoluted but with a little patience it can be worthwhile.

First, right-click the folder you want to access, select Properties, then the Security tab. Next, click the Advanced button at the bottom. In the following window, click the blue Change link to open the ‘Select User or Group’ window.

Now click Advanced, Find Now and select your current user account or Administrators account in the search results and click OK twice. Next, tick the box towards the top of the Advanced Security Settings window, where it says ‘Replace owner on subcontainers and objects’ – this will apply the ownership change to all the files and folders within the user folder you’re trying to access. Click Apply, then Yes. Back in the Advanced Security Settings window, click Add and the Permission Entry window will open.

Here, click ‘Select a principal’, Advanced, Find Now and select your user account (or Administrators account) from the results then click OK. Click OK again, then tick the box next to ‘Full control’ in the Permission Entry window before clicking OK three times.