win10 you don't have access to this folder, takes long time to open

Question

Have SSD from a PC that has win10 installed on it, nothing wrong with the disk. I connect it via sata cable to a different win10 pc and slave it Basically doing a simple data copy from a Win10 disk that will not boot or from one you forgot the login password to, I just want to get the data files out of one user account's My Documents folder. So I am using a second windows 10 pc.

This is all with local user accounts in Windows 10, no domain stuff. And I have admin rights on either disk.

I slave the given SSD off whatever sata port, boot that PC and the disk in question shows up as J: for example. I want to copy everything out of J:\Users\John\My Documents

I can navigate into J:\Users no problem. It is when I click to enter the folder John I get the You don't have access to this folder popup. I am admin on this PC (logged in as C:\Users\ron), so I click continue to give me permission to enter that John folder.

When I do this I get a progress bar that takes 5+ minutes. What is Windows 10 doing when it does this? Why does it take so long to enter a folder like this when it first says you don't have permission to do so but then gives you the continue button to give you permission? Going back to Win7, and winxp days, I never had a problem slaving a windows disk to a running windows pc and accessing any folder, now with win10 there is this overhead of accessing folders.

Is there any way to bypass this delay when doing a data copy like this? Besides booting a linux system and mounting the disk with ntfs-3g (which I have done and there is zero delay to access said folder) ?

Answer 1

What is Windows 10 doing when it does this?

It is attempting changing the permissions on every single file within that directory. Windows will respect the permissions from another Windows installation. An Administrator from Machine A will not be unable to access a folder owned by Administrator from Machine B. However, due to the fact you are an Administrator, you can take ownership of that file.

Which is the reason it is commonly indicated that if a malicious user has physical access to your data, then it has already been compromised unless you encrypt it.

Why does it take so long to enter a folder like this when it first says you don't have permission to do so but then gives you the continue button to give you permission?

The amount of time it will take depends on the amount of data contained in the folder you are taking ownership of.

Going back to Windows 7, and Windows XP days, I never had a problem slaving a windows disk to a running windows pc and accessing any folder, now with win10 there is this overhead of accessing folders.

Windows XP handled security in different ways. While NTFS permissions have not changed since it was released, how the information is presented has been changed, and additional security measures have been added to Windows. I suspected you were dealing with less data when you attempted this on your Windows 7 machine in the past.

Is there any way to bypass this delay when doing a data copy like this?

This behavior cannot be bypassed if you are using individual local machine user profiles. You can use Active Directory domain users. If files are owned by an Active Directory domain user then the file can be accessed on any machine. However, that also means that local machine users wouldn't by default have access to the file.

However, if you wanted to change the permissions on the original local machine so that everyone has permissions that would bypass the need to change the permissions on the second machine. However, you would still have to change the permissions, so you wouldn't actually avoid the delay.

By default, any external drive is accessible by any users. This only changes when you are dealing with an external drive from another system. While your username might be the same, you are not using the same user, and thus permissions must be explicitly be given to both users.

Besides booting a Linux system and mounting the disk with NTFS-3g (which I have done and there is zero delays to access said folder)?

Due to the fact Linux will not respect NTFS file permissions, this is another method to change the NTFS permissions. Linux will only respect NTFS file permissions if it is added to an Active Directory domain.

Answer 2

The way I resolved this is using icacls command in command prompt. The problem was that just too many files and it was taking long. So I ran icacls for just 1 level:

icacls pc /grant mypc:(OI)(CI)M

this one just granted me access to folders in my pC but not the subsequent folders recursively, then I did the same for the folder I wanted.