How to take ownership of an expansion drive, flash drive or any drive for that matter on Windows 7 or 10 using the command prompt (CMD). Use this to take ownership then change permissions to everyone. This is useful when drive permissions get messed up and the drive gives you a permission denied or access denied error message. We will use the command prompt with elevated admin privileges.
- Go to search and type “CMD” without quotes.
- Right click and choose “run as admin”.
Now use the “takeown” command “takeown /f E:\* /r”. The command is “takeown”, the “/f” will force it, “E:\” is the location, “*” means you want to do this for all of the E drive and finally “/r” mean do this for all files, folder and sub-folders.
Once “takeown” is complete you need to change permissions. You can do this with the icacls command. From CMD (the black box command prompt) you need to enter: E:\* /grant Everyone:F /t
If the recycle bin folder on the drive is loaded up it could be causing some of your pain, delete it with: rd /s e:\$Recycle.bin
Let me know if you run into any issues in the comment section below and I’ll give you some help.