How to find out if a file or folder breaks inheritance inside another folder in NTFS without looking at all the files and folders

file-permissionsntfs

So I have two directory hierarchies one on Windows Server 2003 and another on Windows Server 2008 R2.

The directory on Windows Server 2008 R2 was created before hand by right clicking and creating a new folder.

I copied them from the one hierarchy to the other using xcopy

XCOPY \\server2003\Reporting \\server2008\c$\Reporting /O /X /E /H /K /Y /I

But the permissions and Owners are not the same even though /O is supposed to copy ACLs and Owners. What's going on here? The files still get some of the inherited ACLs from the Server 2008's C$ drive.

It makes me worry that the permissions aren't the same on everything; so how do I know that a child file or folder hasn't broken inheritance?

Best Answer

The Sysinternals tool AccessEnum might be able to help. It's a GUI that will recursively scan the permissions from the selected location and let you see where things diverge (if at all).

From the link:

While the flexible security model employed by Windows NT-based systems allows full control over security and file permissions, managing permissions so that users have appropriate access to files, directories and Registry keys can be difficult. There's no built-in way to quickly view user accesses to a tree of directories or keys. AccessEnum gives you a full view of your file system and Registry security settings in seconds, making it the ideal tool for helping you for security holes and lock down permissions where necessary.

AccessEnum screenshot

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