Ownership-Management Tools

In the main article, "Modify File Ownership," I discuss how to use Alexander Frink's Chown.exe tool (http://wwwthep.physik.uni-mainz.de/~frink/nt.html) to transfer file ownership to another user. (Chown is just one of several interesting command-line tools available at Frink's site; be sure to look over his other offerings.)

Microsoft also provides several useful tools to manage Windows NTFS file ownership. The Subinacl tool (available in multiple Microsoft Windows resource kit versions) offers a /setowner=owner switch option that you can use to change ownership. However, Subinacl has some tricky switch options and isn't a very friendly tool. For more information about Subinacl, see "Auditing File Ownership," March 2004, InstantDoc ID 41504; also see the Microsoft article "Using the Command Line to Edit Multiple Subdirectory Permissions" (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=265360). Fileowners.pl is a Perl-based Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit tool that requires a Perl installation on the node that initiates the query. Detailed information about this tool is available in the Microsoft article "HOW TO: Use the File Ownership Script Tool (Fileowners.pl) in Windows 2000" (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=320046). Fileman.vbs is another resource kit tool that you can find in the Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit or the Win2K resource kit. For an overview of this tool and its use, see "Seize File Ownership with Fileman.vbs," June 2000, InstantDoc ID 8748.

Although you can't use Robocopy XP010 to modify ownership information, you can use it to copy ownership information by specifying the /COPYALL switch. If you're using the more granular COPY/DATSOU switch options, you must include the O subswitch option for the ownership information to be copied. (Earlier Robocopy versions don't possess the ownership-copy feature. For more information, see "Robocopy XP010 FAQ," December 2004, InstantDoc ID 44324.)

And of course, no discussion about file ownership would be complete without mentioning the trusty Dir command. You can use this command's /Q switch to view ownership information, as in the following sample command:

Dir /Q \salessrv1folderATest*.*