Maximum PC

I have an old Vista hard drive that is just collecting dust right now. The access I have right now is a Limited Account on XP. I know, scary. I have Knoppix 6.4.4 on CD, and would like to remove all NTFS permissions from my old Vista User Account folder, so I can peruse old files that I've been unable to for going on 8 months. How can I do this? I don't want to live format the drive into something different that would clear the entire drive of NTFS-ness. (Is that a word? lol) Under Knoppix, I can see all files inside my old User folder on the Vista drive, but I can't remember how to purge all NTFS permissions inside a folder.

Note: I must keep it NTFS as there is a 349GB archive containing a massive amount of DVD rips, and I have no other drive big enough to transfer things via the C&P method. It is a 1TB, and my XP is a tiny 80GB. I don't have the ability to install any software or an entire OS onto the 1TB drive, as I have no discs, no money, and a DSL connection that might as well be dial-up (egads!).

I would welcome any advice to let me clear the pesky Vista Secure User permissions BS that plagues me. (I'm not sure of what that is actually called. I just remember that under a Windows environment, my entire User folder from Vista is "Access is denied.") I also don't have access to a W7 machine's admin account to take ownership of the folder either.

linux doesn't really deal with NTFS partitions short of just mounting them, so I'm a little unclear as to why you posted this in here...

Well...I want to access the files in XP. I don't have admin rights. Vista drive is refusing to boot on the 5 year old system I'm using. Knoppix can read and write to the drive, but I can't go through and move some 500GB of data to new folders, as there are about 1260 folders under the protection of those damned NTFS permissions, which are making it impossible to view in XP since I can't take ownership of the folder on a limited account.

so give youself admin rights...



As would any livecd...and it seems like you know how to do this.



Maybe I should take that last statement back....

what's your concern with the permissions after you mount the partition?

OK, maybe I'm not being clear: I want to run a process or command or tool under Knoppix to strip the folder of anything that NTFS (via Vista) can lock out. I would rather go through a single command or tool, than manually moving all the content out and making new folders for all my files. I can do plenty of things under Knoppix. But I want to just be able to access the folder containing my stuff under XP (Limited Account) without hassle.

again...



In case that wasn't clear...a command doesn't exist, When you mount, you mount as read/write (umask=000 or whatever method you choose), but that's only applicable while you're in Linux..



Again...so login under the admin account and add yourself to the administrators group.

At this point I'm really not understanding why this is such a difficult task

The access I have is only on a LIMITED ACCOUNT in XP. I DO NOT HAVE ADMIN RIGHTS. Which is why I want to clear the NTFS permissions some way. I also can't get the admin to grant me those rights...

So what's preventing you from actually using the administrator account (there is one there) or perhaps asking whoever uses the administrator account to actually give you the admin rights you seek...

or maybe is it appropriate to remind you of that we're not going to help you circumvent securities?

Never mind. I managed to figure out a solution for the time being. I will periodically move files (like the entire collection of BSG I have) to a 40GB usb drive, and watch from there in Windows. Then rinse, repeat.