File and Folder Ownership

[Ethan Hunt]

I started using a removable 2.5" hard drive as an external drive for several months now, but recently I started having some "problems" with it.

Namely, for the past few weeks I started having ownership issues with the disk. Whenever I copy something from one computer, I can't open it on a different one without first having to take ownership of those files or folders.

It's not that it's difficult to do, but it's absolutely pointless to always have to do it since the disk is always in my possession.

My question is, is there a way to remove this ownership business so that my disk returns to it's previous state where whatever I copy and wherever I copy it from can be accessed wherever I want to without having to do anything special.

Also, I would like to know what caused this change to the disk since I have no clue what I did that imposed these ownership rules?

I'd like to mention that I did do some google research before posting here but all I managed to find on google were several tutorials on how to take ownership, but none on how to remove the whole ownership deal.

Thanks in advance!

[ret]

is one of the computers on an AD domain?

[Sparda]

make administrator the owner of the drive and grant everyone rw access?

[digip]

-or- Backup the files, format it as a Fat file system(Not NTFS!) and then copy the files back over. Fat file systems do not have any file ownership settings like that of NTFS. ;)

[Sparda]

-or- Backup the files, format it as a Fat file system(Not NTFS!) and then copy the files back over. Fat file systems do not have any file ownership settings like that of NTFS. ;)

FAT can't have files over 4GB.

Windows XP, 2003 and Vista won't let you format any partition over 32GB using FAT.

You should use ext3 and make users (usually GID 100) the group owner and grnt rwx for both group and other. That way every thing is less confusing.

[digip]

FAT can't have files over 4GB.

Windows XP, 2003 and Vista won't let you format any partition over 32GB using FAT.

You should use ext3 and make users (usually GID 100) the group owner and grnt rwx for both group and other. That way every thing is less confusing.

Unless you are using Vista(I think it can read ext2/3 file systems by default) you would need some sort of plugin or dll to read the drive by any windows software. It is possible under windows, but not without additional software. UBCD4WIN has a plugin to allow reading and writing to ext2/3 file systems(and I think, but not positive, the reiser file system).

I just figured use Fat because no file ownership issues would arise, and you can partition up whatever you need for fat depending on how large the external hdd is. If he really has files over 4 gig in size, then NTFS is probably the way to go for windows, ext2 for linux.

(why do you need ext3 with journaling for a backup drive to shuttle around files and not just ext2? Just curious.)

If keeping NTFS, just change permissions on all copied files to "everyone" (On the external drive, not your pc) so when moving to a new computer, you do not have to take ownership of the files. It is an extra step, but probably not any other way around it if the files have specific ownership rights to begin with. Alternatively, you could try to write a script that sets all the permissions on the external drive to the "everyone" flag once you are done.

[Tenzer]

If you need to read or write to ext2/3 partitions from Windows, you can use this driver for it. It works very well from what I have tried: http://www.fs-driver.org/

Btw, I doubt that Windows Vista can read ext2/3 partitions as default now. At least I haven't heard anything about it before now.

[Ethan Hunt]

I'd like to thank every1 4 your replies!

Just wanted to mention: I didn't wanna use fat32 cuz of the 4gig limit on files. This being an backup drive I have a lot of files that exceed that size. Also, I didn't wanna use ext3 cuz even though (as you guys said) I can read it on Windows using some sort of plugins this would imply that I need to install/setup them on every machine I connect the disk to, something that is out of the question on several machines as I don't have permission to do that sort of stuff.

I was thinking of trying Sparda's solution and "make administrator the owner of the drive and grant everyone rw access" and did just that. Seems crazy enough to work :) jk

I found out that the disk had some permissions granted to users that I don't even know, as well as some weird (sakjhfjk23342hkjh) user names and started to think that maybe somewhere along the line of people that used this disk someone had a virus that changed ownership or permissions and stuff... Do you guys think that's possible?

And another question, if you guys don't mind. If I backup the files on a different drive and reformat this drive using NTFS (again)... Will it reset all of the ownership settings and return the drive to the ownerless state in which it was b4 all this happened?

Thanks again!

[Sparda]

When you see lots of 'random' charters in place of a username on Windows, that means Windows couldn't figure out what user it is. The 'random' text is actually the UID which on Linux would be a 4 or 5 digit number.

So the permissions on the drive are probably referring to a user on a different computer. thee Administrator user and Everyone group alway have the same UID on every computer running Windows.

When you format the drive Windows will use the default file permissions, what every they may happen to be.