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November 06, 2009 12:00 AM

NTFS Inheritance Rule Change

Windows IT Pro
InstantDoc ID #102924
Rating: (6)

Until recently, NTFS permissions have followed these inheritance rules:

  1. If a file or folder is copied to some other location, it will inherit the new location's NTFS permissions.
  2. If a file or folder is moved to some other location on a different disk drive, it will inherit the new location's NTFS permissions.
  3. If a file or folder is moved to some other location on the same disk drive, it will retain the original location's NTFS permissions.

One of the NTFS inheritance rules changed in Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Vista. Now if you move a file or folder, it will inherit the new location's NTFS permissions, even if the new location is on the same disk drive. This is a radical shift that you need to take into account when you're moving files. You can find a reference to this change in the Notes section in the Microsoft article "Inherited permissions are not automatically updated when you move folders".

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Comments
  • Murat
    3 years ago
    Dec 16, 2009

    Slemmesmi, there are two cases:
    1) Legacy clients (2000, XP and 2003) may access the files remotely thru the shares and move the files from GUI. In this case, the former inheritance rule is applied; that is, if the files are moved to a folder on the same disk partition, they do not acquire the new folder's permissions, they keep their original NTFS permissions.
    2) New clients (Vista, 2008 and Windows 7) may access the files remotely thru the shares and move the files from GUI. In this case, the new inheritance rule is applied and the files acquire the new folder's permissions.

    Yes, it is very confusing and may result in some unexpected file operations. It is a shame Microsoft hasn't explained these point widely.

  • Soren
    3 years ago
    Dec 14, 2009

    Very interesting read indeed!
    Question (also in respect of the comment by tovod-everett) is then if the desired behaviour (a move does cause inheritance updates of NTFS permissions of the moved object(s) to those of it's new parent) in a scenario with a Windows Server 2008 SP2 (e.g. Enterprise Edition) with File Services Role hosting file shares and Windows 7 clients; i.e. when a user on a Windows 7 client, move a folder/files within a file share hosted by the mentioned server on it's "same" disk?
    As I haven't yet got a Windows 7 client I can test this with in my productive environment, would llike to learn from your experience/knowledge.

  • Jean-Marc
    3 years ago
    Nov 25, 2009

    Thanks for this important info

  • TOBY
    3 years ago
    Nov 24, 2009

    Testing under Windows Server 2008 SP2 shows that this behavioral change only affects moves done using the GUI. If you move a file or folder from a Command Prompt using the move command, the permissions do not get updated to reflect the permissions in the new location. Microsoft evidently decided to modify Explorer so as to compensate for the underlying issue, but did not modify the behavior of the underlying APIs. This is understandable given the complexity of modifying the underlying file system behavior without sacrificing the atomic nature of moving files and folders.

    If you are running Windows Server 2008 file servers but still have users on XP and they do moves using the GUI, the permissions will be improperly inherited because Microsoft left it the responsibility of the GUI to fixup the permissions.

    See the Perl module Win32::Security for a tool that can assist in identifying improperly inherited permissions that result from moves between locations with dissimilar inheritable permissions.

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