Permissions and Read Only

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

I recently had to have my computer reformatted. I used the backup on my WD My Book Essentials to restore my files onto my computer. However, I am running into all kinds of issues with permissions. Even though I am the administrator on my computer none of the files seem to recognize this. When I tried to put my photos into my pictures folder I had to go into each folder and adjust the permissions and I could not change them as a group. I decided to put the whole folder of pictures on my desktop and then it allowed me to change the permissions for all the folders of photos at once. All my files on my WD external drive are in Read Only mode and when I try to change the permissions it won’t even apply the changes.  I am at a loss as to how to fix this. Any ideas?

2

Hi and welcome to the WD community.

I recommend taking ownership of the folder you would like to access to see if this helps with the permissions. Please check this link to check if this helps with he process:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753659.aspx

3

I’ve had that problem , plugged drive into my server, filled it up then moved it to my windows 7 computer.

had to take ownership of all the files to do anything. it being a 4 tb drive and 87% full, doing it 1 file at a time was not for me.

there is a reg. add on. called take ownership. (google it)

i added it, then click on drive, right click. (take ownership is in the list) click on it and it will make you the owner of all the files in that drive or folder.

4

I have done this but every time I change the permissions and say ok it clears the permissions back. I am at a loss to understand why this is like this and how to fix it. I had no problem with the WD drive before I had to reformat my computer. Is there something with the reformatting that could have caused this problem?

5

I checked the reg add on through google but this solution is beyond my expertise. 

6

I am having the same issue and I never reformatted my computer.  We should not have to mess with any registry tools to fix this issue.

Can someone please explain how / why the folders became read only?

UPDATE:  I clicked on my personal folder from Windows explorer.  This required me to Authenticate using my WD User login.  Once I performed this I could then edit all other folders.