Taking Ownership of external drives - Windows 7 /Vista

OspreyO · 13 Jul 2009 at 11:29

I've had this problem before. Someone borrowed an external drive. When I got it back I'm having problems with ownership on the files and the drive itself. Also I see theres now System restore files on it. 16GB. Now I always turn this off so its not from my machine. I can't delete those files. I can't change the drive letter mapping for the drive, or rename it. When I take ownership give my username or the admin group full rights. I get no errors but it doesn't seem to work. But I can't say make some folders not read only.

derkaderka · 13 Jul 2009 at 11:39

thats why its better to use fat32 for external drives

OspreyO · 13 Jul 2009 at 14:43

derkaderka said:
thats why its better to use fat32 for external drives

That would solve it then?

Dewotter · 13 Jul 2009 at 15:00

OspreyO said:
That would solve it then?

True that it may 'solve' the issue, but you won't be able to store any single file over 2GB in size, so dependant on what you store on it, this may not be an effective way of getting around the issue.

OspreyO · 13 Jul 2009 at 15:11

I'd have some files over 2GB alright.

I've managed to delete most of the crud now, using a Windows XP machine.

neil_g · 13 Jul 2009 at 15:46

actually its 4GB limitation..

You cannot create a file larger than (2^32)-1 bytes (this is one byte less than 4 GB) on a FAT32 partition.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463

you should be able to take ownership of the files by right clicking, security, advanced, ownership.

OspreyO · 13 Jul 2009 at 16:20

neil_g said:
you should be able to take ownership of the files by right clicking, security, advanced, ownership.

Thats what I thought.

OspreyO · 13 Jul 2009 at 17:00

Does using TrueCrypt get around the 4GB limit?