Copy problem with directories that user has no access to

[ctnpi]

I've been using Total Commander for copying large amounts of files from one system to another and it has generally worked very well over the years.

One thing I noticed recently is that if a folder is modified in a certain way, it will not have its contents copied, nor will it warn the user that the contents cannot be copied. My example is that a user created a new folder within the file structure, removed security permissions inheritance, and then removed all security objects from having access to the folder except for that person's own account. When I do a copy, I always choose the "preserve NTFS permissions" option.

It seems that what happens is that the folder will be copied, but the contents will not be. The folder itself will not have the same permissions - my guess is, since the other user was the only one with access to it, when the folder was copied it was just created with inherited permissions.

What I'm curious about is if this is working as intended (or as well as Windows will let it work), or if there's something that can be done to the software to alert the user that there is content that is not being copied? I did browse through the options and did not see something relevant.

Thank you!

[ghisler(Author)]

I guess that FindFirstFile returns "success, no files", so TC cannot know that there are actually files in that folder - otherwise it would report an error.

[ctnpi]

That makes sense. Think there's anything I can do with TC to make myself aware of it, or will I just need to be aware of this moving forward?

[ghisler(Author)]

Maybe you can modify the permissions of these directories, to prevent that the problem occurs? I have never seen this problem with the permissions issued by Windows (e.g. for other user's documents folders).

[ctnpi]

That's certainly something I do once I've identified them, the problem is just that, identifying them. I was just curious if Total Commander could detect that and alert me somehow when I'm copying a directory with several hundred sub-directories, or of that's something I'll have to just be aware of going forward. There may be another better way for me to work around this too with inherited permissions that I'll play around with - if I can prevent users from taking ownership of a folder and locking it down themselves, that'd stop it before it became a problem.

[Dalai]

Maybe you should check whether there are directories with different permissions. AccessEnum can help with that.

Regards
Dalai