Hence while a NTFS HDD with tweaked security settings - say with only administrator access/ownership under security tab may work perfectly in XP, OS X, Ubuntu etc In my understanding, Windows 7 interprets the permissions on a NTFS drive very strictly. Finally though, i was able to identify the root cause empirically and fix it.ġ. I tried suggestions on various forums but nothing worked. I faced a similar problem when trying to move a NTFS formatted disk from XP to windows 7. From activity on other forums, it looks like this is one of the principal problems with Windows 7 namely that using an administrator account doesn't give you complete, unrestricted access to everything on your computer.

This seems like a pretty cumbersome work around, and I'd like to think there's an easier way. Once this is done, I guess I will just reformat the drive (that is assuming I don't get blocked from doing so). I'm currently in the process of copying the files to my desktop and backing them up on disks. I found that I could access the files in safe mode. Once I took permission and ownership of the drive and all subfolders etc. When I ran in safe mode, I found that I could at least search the contents of the drive, but I couldn't move anything.

the disk doesn't show up as foreign in disk management, it was formatted as NTFS in XP Running cmd & doing a dir shows all the files on the drive Trying to take permisson of all the objects doesn't work either, even though it looks like windows can enumerate all the files & folders on the drive I had this exact same problem as well.

External hard drive windows 7