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Is it possible to mount an NTFS filesystem on Windows without permission restrictions?

A typical scenario occurs when you connect a drive containing NTFS partitions from another computer. In this scenario, much of the user content will be inaccessible until you modify the ACLs to give access permissions to your own user's SID.

Windows will offer you to make it permanently accessible, but that causes a lengthy operation that modifies the disk:

Illustration

I'm curious whether there's a "mount option" to use that'll mark a mounted volume as allowing permissive "everyone" access -- specifically when mounting on Windows (not Linux nor Mac).

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Nope. You can however take ownership of the file system including all child directories.

You could also attempt to create a user with the same credentials as the owner of the original account that had access to the system although I haven't tested this.

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  • I imagine a recreated user account with have a different ID, wouldn't it?
    – Michael Frank
    Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 2:08
  • I know that if you are logged in to an account with the same username and password as another account on a different system you will not be prompted for credentials if you attempt to access remote resources on that machine. I would try it.
    – Scandalist
    Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 2:10
  • ACLs are matched by the SID, so you'd have to recreate an account with the same SID. However, this is not what I asked.
    – Ilya
    Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 2:22
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    What good would ACL's and SID's be if you could just mark a volume accessible by everyone.
    – Scandalist
    Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 2:26
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    @Scandalist Depends on who "you" is. An admin with access to the disk should be able to do pretty much anything without any limitations. Permissions, IMO, should only be applicable to limited users or on the network.
    – laggingreflex
    Commented Dec 14, 2017 at 17:34
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Open Task Manager, open the Details tab and find and kill the process explorer.exe.

Next, click the File menu, then "Run New Task." Check the option "Create this task with administrative privileges." Then type in explorer.exe in the "Open" box and click OK.

This will start explorer.exe with an elevated token and will allow you to access most files and folders without issues. If "Administrators" is deliberately blocked from having access, then you will still need to take ownership. But, this is not the case with user profile folders.

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