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jfhollowayFlag for United States of America

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force ownership of files so they can be copied/moved to another drive?

I am trying to copying some files but, I am getting access denied. I have tried to take ownership of the files through the advanced ownership option but, I still get access denied. I there a way to force ownership so they can be copied/moved to another drive? The PC is running Windows 7.
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Sebastian Talmon
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You can try robocopy with the /zb switch. It should be able to copy or move files without taking ownership first:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy

(robocopy is also available on Windows 7)
are you logged in as a local admin on the PC?
If the files are in USERS, then make a folder c:\temp and copy the files to c:\temp.  Then move them to the other machine.  Easier than security settings on USERS.
What everyone already said but ... I will say I have seen in one case where the ownership could not be regained and basically we went to the proverbial (1) reload OS and (2) using the latest backup copy.
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Thanks for all of the replies. Robocopy isn't able to access the directories or files (I also tried xxcopy). I am logged in as the local admin. I am unable to move the files to another directories because I am getting access denied to the folder\files.
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jfholloway
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Thanks everyone