Can change permissions of whole folders, have to do it file by file

So recently I had some trouble with windows 7 and upgraded to ten after two attempts at reinstalling 7. I backed up my documents, music, etc onto one of many hard drives currently inside my machine before those two reinstall attempts. Now I'm at windows 10 and I can't mass change permissions of certain folders on that hard drive. Originally the problem was that for some reason I didn't have permissions to view files in those folders even though it's the same machine, merely a different windows installation, and I am also the only owner of my hard drives and my machine, so I fail to see why I should be disallowed access to MY files. Unfortunately I NEED what's in these folders, as it contains all of my music as well as important documents and the programs I need to reinstall to this machine. Anyway, the problem is this, I can change permissions to give myself access to these files ONE AT A TIME, but I cannot do this en masse to the entire folders. That poses a significant problem given the fact that there are 14,000 files in those folders, I cannot POSSIBLY manually change the permissions one file at a time, nor should I have to. I attempt to add permissions so that my username can even read the files, but it merely gives me the error "An error occurred while applying security information to [Folder name]. Failed to enumerate objects in the container. Access is denied" Once again, I am the ONLY user on this machine and I AM an administrator, so I fail to see why I should not once again have access to MY files. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

TairikuOkami said:

Try Resetting NTFS files permission in Windows – Graphical Utility

Alternatively, try this (run in CMD as admin):

Code:

takeown /f D: /a /r /d y
icacls D: /inheritance:r /grant:r Administrators:(OI)(CI)F /t /l /q /c

takeown /s %computername% /u %username% /f D: /r /d y
icacls D: /inheritance:r /grant:r %username%:(OI)(CI)F /t /l /q /c

Beautiful, that utility seems to have fixed it! Thank you very much!

Bree said:

The reason is that it's not the name of your account that identifies you for permission purposes, it the SID of your account. That is that long number you see as 'Account Unknown' in your screenshot, because on THIS install your old account from the previous installation IS unknown.

The solution is the take ownership with your new account, which is what TarikuOkami's commands helped you do.

Right, I understand why, the process to fix that in the entire hard drive was just unknown to me.

Brink said:

In addition to not need 3rd party software: :)

Add Reset Permissions to Context Menu in Windows | Windows 10 Tutorials

Add Take Ownership to Context Menu in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials

That is actually more useful in the long run, thank you. Almost all the files on the hard drive are accessible, just two folders with 81 files left. I still don't have permission to view them despite taking ownership and resetting permissions through the option added to the context menu. If they are completely inaccessible, I will just format the drive, I can't copy the files to another hard drive nor view their contents.

What's odd is that the whole folder says read-only even though I can delete the files and move them within the original hard drive if I want, I just can't view or copy them to another hard drive

Brink said:

Actually, your screenshot doesn't show the folder as Read-only.

Set or Unset Read-only Attribute of Files and Folders in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials

Let's see what your advanced security settings show for the folder to see if anything may standout. Be sure to blank out any email addresses if shown.

I can delete the whole folder with contents, but I still don't have permission to open or copy the files inside the folder. I want to be able to access and copy the remaining files to a separate hard drive before I reformat the hard drive the files are on. I was mentioning deleting the files only as a last resort, I still would prefer to have them.