Ever hooked up an old drive and received error messages regarding permissions while copying or browsing through folders? There’s a simple way to reset and clear the user permissions for all the folders in one go.

Via Command prompt (admin) type the below code. In this case E:/ indicates that everything within the E drive will be reset. For more information on what the other parameters do, check out the below links.

icacls E:\ /reset

icacls E:\ /reset /t /c /l

Links & References

How to Reset NTFS Permissions Using a Simple, Free utility
https://blog.foldersecurityviewer.com/how-to-reset-ntfs-file-permissions/

reset all permissions for windows 10 and remove any unwanted hidden – Microsoft Community
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/reset-all-permissions-for-windows-10-and-remove/1d164613-781c-4bff-96e9-ce09649a1546

Icacls | Microsoft Learn
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-R2-and-2012/cc753525(v=ws.11)?redirectedfrom=MSDN

Takeown | Microsoft Learn
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-R2-and-2012/cc753024(v=ws.11)?redirectedfrom=MSDN

Quickly Reset NTFS Permissions in Windows 10
https://winaero.com/reset-ntfs-permissions-windows-10/