Win 7 Security tab gone!

[Mailman653]

Alright, so let me know if I screwed myself out of my hard drive contents.

I took the hard drive from my old computer and put it into my new one, problem is that Windows would tell me I need ownership of almost every file I click on inside the old HDD. So for a while I was clicking each file one by one (the stuff I needed), but I got tired of doing it so I started messing around with the advanced features of ownership and what not.

Eventually I got the "bright" idea that instead of doing this file by file (removing the old ownership and taking ownership on my new PC) why not just remove the old ownership from the whole HDD and then restore it. I figured that would remove all the old ownership rights in one shot and give them new ownership in one shot.

So I did just that and like an idiot I closed the properties window. So I click open again and now I'm missing the securites tab. That means I can't give new ownership to the whole hard drive. I really couldn't find an answer online and I'm still new to Win 7. So is there anything I can do short of formating the drive (assuming it will let me).

[Lemur]

Here's a rough guide to ownership and permissions in Win7; see if anything there is of use.

When you say the "securities tab" is missing, you're talking about the menu that comes up when you right-click a folder, yes? So you right-clicked the HD, went to "properties" and messed with permissions. And now you're missing that tab. Am I with you so far?

Here's a utility that allows you to take permission (for the current user) with a simple right-click. Worth trying out.

[Mailman653]

Thanks for the quick reply! I wish I knew about that utlity sooner, it would have saved me the headache. And yes, you are correct in your assumption. Basically it looks like this:


Technically if the information on it is a loss, it wouldn't be too bad since I have a back up HDD. But the backup doesn't have everything in there. For example I had TATW on that hard drive which I wanted to bring over to my current drive. TATW isn't on my back up HDD, so id have to d/l the mod again (huge d/l).

[Lemur]

Don't write that data off -- if the disk platters are still spinning, I assure you they can be recovered.

Try the utility I linked. Poke around and look for other utilities that allow you to bulk-edit permissions. There is bound to be a tool that does the trick. Don't worry about the missing security tab, it's a non-issue. What you need to do is change the permissions on the disk without using that interface. Heck, there might be a way to do it through the registry.

[Mailman653]

Hmm....I have some familiarity with Regedit. I wonder where I could find what corresponds to my locked out HDD, compare it to the HDD with the OS, then change the permissions so they look the same.

[Tellos Athenaios]

What is odd is that the drive is detected as having a capacity of exactly 0 bytes. Are you sure the thing is actually mounted? Have you tried rebooting yet?