How do I backup NTFS's $Secure ?

July 14, 2005 5:09 AM

Anyone know of a way to backup/restore the $Secure metadata file in NTFS? Preferably something that wouldn't require a full backup/restore of the entire file system?
posted by yeoz to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Coming from the Unix side of things, I'm used to storing/recovering ACL data with the getfacl/setfacl commands. They are present in Cygwin but not as robust as the Unix varieties I'm used to, i.e. they can't recurse through directories. However, with some scripting I'm sure it's possible to recreate this behavior. I'd consider the Cygwin/getfacl/setfacl option a last resort, though, and look for a native NTFS tool first. Hopefully somebody else can point you in the right direction.
posted by zsazsa at 5:56 AM on July 14, 2005

CACLS is the native tool.
posted by grouse at 6:24 AM on July 14, 2005

Use subinacl from the Server 2003 resource kit to export the ACLs as a giant textfile (something like (from the root of the drive)
subinacl /file *.* /display > blah.txt
You can use subinacl's playback function later to restore the information if necessary.

Alternately, you can create a mirrored directory tree of the drive with 0 data size using robocopy (Windows Resource Kit) as follows:
robocopy . \\server\backup_dir /create /copy:osu

Do note that none of this will preserve the share permissions.
posted by j.edwards at 10:37 AM on July 14, 2005

:D subinacl worked like a charm. thanks.

The subinacl that comes with the 2003 resource kit doesn't work, but, I managed to find an updated version on the Microsoft site. It was exactly what I was looking for.

My previous method was a giant kludge based off of xcacls.vbs which totally sucked :(
posted by yeoz at 3:29 PM on July 14, 2005