Resetting NTFS Permissions Disk Wide

If you’re talking about a disk that doesn’t contain a Windows installation, just use the “TAKEOWN” and “ICACLS” utilities:

TAKEOWN /f "X:\" /r /d y
ICACLS "X:\" /reset /T

Then you can reset the ACLs to whatever you want.

If it’s a disk with a Windows 2000, XP, or Server 2003 operating system installed (don’t know about Vista on this one) you could try re-applying the default security template:

secedit /configure /db secedit.sdb /cfg %SystemRoot%\defltwk.inf /overwrite /verbose

(On a Windows Server install, substitute “defltsv.inf” for “defltwk.inf”.)

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