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How to Back Up and Restore NTFS and Share Permissions
Craig Landis 24 Nov 2008 12:22 PM
Note that this content has also been added to the TechNet Wiki to allow for community editing.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/how-to-back-up-and-restore-ntfs-and-share-
permissions.aspx
From time to time we are asked how to backup and restore NTFS file system permissions as well as network share
permissions. KB article 125996 talks about the network share piece of it, but it does not talk about NTFS permissions.
One thing that has made the NTFS permissions piece of this simpler is the Icacls tool. Icacls was developed for Windows
Vista as a replacement for tools such as Cacls, Xcacls, and Xcacls.vbs. It was also included in Service Pack 2 for Windows
Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.
Backup and Restore of Share Permissions
To backup share permissions, export the Shares registry key.
1. Open Regedit to the following location:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares
2. Right-click the Shares registry key and select Export. Give it a file name such as shareperms.reg.
When you want to restore the permissions, double-click shareperms.reg to import it back into the registry.
Use the Reg tool to backup the registry key from the command line:
reg export HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares shareperms.reg
If you need to restore it at some point, just run:
reg import shareperms.reg
Backup and Restore of NTFS Permissions
Use this command to backup NTFS permissions:
icacls d:\data /save ntfsperms.txt /t /c
The /T switch allows it to get subfolder permissions too. The /C switch allows it to continue even if errors are encountered
(although errors will still be displayed).
Use this command to restore them:
icacls d:\ /restore ntfsperms.txt
Note that in the command to save the permissions, I specified the target folder D:\Data, but when I restored them, I
specified just D:\ as the target. Icacls is a little funky like that, and heres why.
If you open the text file with the exported permissions (ntfsperms.txt in the above example), youll see that Icacls uses
relative paths (in bold below). Underneath the relative paths are the permissions for the folders in Security Descriptor
Definition Language (SDDL) format.
data
D:AI(A;ID;FA;;;BA)(A;OICIIOID;GA;;;BA)(A;ID;FA;;;SY)(A;OICIIOID;GA;;;SY)(A;OICIID;0x1200a9;;;BU)
(A;ID;0x1301bf;;;AU)(A;OICIIOID;SDGXGWGR;;;AU)
data\folder1
D:AI(A;ID;FA;;;BA)(A;OICIIOID;GA;;;BA)(A;ID;FA;;;SY)(A;OICIIOID;GA;;;SY)(A;OICIID;0x1200a9;;;BU)
(A;ID;0x1301bf;;;AU)(A;OICIIOID;SDGXGWGR;;;AU)
data\folder2
D:AI(A;ID;FA;;;BA)(A;OICIIOID;GA;;;BA)(A;ID;FA;;;SY)(A;OICIIOID;GA;;;SY)(A;OICIID;0x1200a9;;;BU)
(A;ID;0x1301bf;;;AU)(A;OICIIOID;SDGXGWGR;;;AU)
Had I specified D:\Data in the command to restore the permissions, it would have failed looking for a D:\Data\Data
folder:
D:\>icacls d:\data /restore perms.txt
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Comments
Anonymous
27 Nov 2008 11:09 AM
Anonymous
1 Dec 2008 5:25 PM
James Fish
12 Dec 2008 6:03 PM
d:\data\data: The system cannot find the file specified.
Successfully processed 0 files; Failed processing 1 files
You might think specifying D:\ as the target in the restore command may somehow mess up the permissions on other
folders at that level, but as you can see from the ntfsperms.txt output file, it only has information about the Data folder
and subfolders, so that is all it will change.
- Craig Landis
From time to time we are asked how to backup and restore NTFS file system permissions as well as network
Looking for a quick way to capture the permissions on your existing file server in prep for a server
Thanks for the tip!
Alternatively this can be done with scriptlogic's security explorer that is a great solution for managing ntfs, share,
sql, sharepoint and exchange permissions.
With this tool you can view, edit, grant, revoke, clone and backup/restore any type of listed above permissions.
http://www.scriptlogic.com/products/security-explorer