Access denied to external drive for one desktop

Question

I have a Samsung G2 external USB 2.0 drive. It works fine with most Windows 7/10 machines, yet for some reason I cannot really use it with one Windows 10 desktop.

Anything I try to do, I get an error that indicates a problem with privileges, i.e., mostly it is "Access Denied" or similar. Weird thing is that somehow I was able to use it for like an hour yesterday yet later, out of nowhere, the errors started popping up again.

I do not use Windows in English so the error messages I mention may sound slightly different in English.

What I have tried so far:

1. Entering Security tab and changing permissions - when I press "Change", I only get information that I do not have privileges to edit the permissions for this object; "Cannot display owner" is printed in the window where the current owner info should be shown.

2. Logging on to the Administrator account, running cmd as administrator and trying

   • takeown /F F:\ /R (got ERROR: Access Denied)
   • chkdsk F:\ (got Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode.)

3. Plugging into different USB port (3.0/2.0 as well).

4. Checking drivers - they report to be up-to-date.
5. Running HDDScan's SMART - got UltraDMA CRC Errors valued at 100 (the drive's been used for some time already)
6. Running sfc /scannow - no errors found.

Any ideas? Where should I search for some tips or clues on, at least, what is faulty - OS, drive or, maybe, USB ports? Anything else than this drive works fine with USB ports in this desktop.

Answer 1

Right click the External Drive in My Computer and go to Properties. From here go to security.

If security tab not present then go back to My Computer and then click on File then Folder View Then click on the View Tab Scrool to the bottom and uncheck use simple security.

Go to the Security tab. Go ahead and click on the Advanced Button at the bottom. In this windows click on the Owner tab. Then click on the Change Owner button. If its an external drive then i would change it to the Everyone User so you don't have this issue later and hit apply. Should take owerner ship now. Now click on. Now on the users part at the top click on Edit. In there you should probably see and Unknow User name. Click on that and remove it.