Probably one of the most powerful aspects of Microsoft Windows is the way you can share resources.
Now I'm going to have a lot of episodes that cover this but to get started I want to create a scenario
what we have here is one computer.
In fact this is the only computer that I have at my company.
And on this one computer when we shoot a video we save that onto my E drive.
I've got one little folder called video and we put all these videos in here and there are two groups
of people who work at my company.
There are reviewers and there are editors.
And what I want to do is set this up so that when a reviewer sits down at this computer he can review
the videos but he can't accidentally delete them or do something like that.
And then if he logs out and an editor comes in and fires up his editing software he can go ahead and
edit those videos.
So what we're talking about is setting up sharing on a single system there is no networking involved
here at all.
This is really the best way to begin your understanding.
Because really what we're going to be talking about here are NTFS permissions so now you've got the
basic setup.
Let me show you how I've got my system up and running right now.
So first of all what I want to show you are the four users that I've made I've made Harry Jerry rich
and Tom.
Now if you took a look over in groups I'd made two groups editor and reviewer.
If we opened up the editor you'll see that Harry and Gerry are members of the editor group and if we
take a look at reviewer How about if I click that just once there we go we can see that rich and Tom
are members of the reviewer group.
Now if you take a look over on my I've got a new drive in your drive and you'll see that right now I
have one folder in there called videos and inside there are four movies so these are movies that I need
these four guys to look at.
Two of them are reviewers to make sure I'm saying the right stuff.
And two of them are editors to make me look good.
So what we're going to do right now is go through the process of setting this up so that the reviewers
can see but they can't accidentally delete or edit and that the editors can see it and edit it and they
can even delete them if they need to because well they're editors and that's what editors do.
So let's start by well doing it wrong.
So take a look right now.
Here's one movie so I'm going to Right-Click on here.
I'm going to select Properties and I'm going to go to security.
So what I want to do right now is I'm going to add one of those users.
So I'm going to add.
And in this case I'm going to pick Harry
and you can see when I click check names Harry gets underlined which means that is a real username.
And now what I want you to look at are these options right here.
These are the actual NTFS permissions.
So these NTFS permissions you can see we have full control modify read and execute read.
Right.
Hold on that's not all of them.
And then special permissions.
So at this moment I don't want to talk about exactly what these mean but I want to make sure you understand
how we get to them and how we can change them if we want.
So right now we've got Harry selected and he has read and execute and read.
Ok so I will explain those to read and execute is an NTFS permission that really applies mainly to executable
files.
If I had an executable program in there then if I checked that Harry would be able to not only read
that file but you'd actually run it as well read as more for data files.
So if I check read in here Harry can actually look at it.
He could open it up in an editor but if he had files save it wouldn't let him do it.
All right.
So we've got the set up I'm going to hit OK and then I want to talk about this for a minute because
we've got a couple of problems here.
First of all what if harry quits if he quits.
I'm going to have to go in here and take out all these NTFS permissions.
So that's a bit of an issue.
The second issue I have is what if I add more videos to this folder then I'm going to start running
into a situation where I'm going to have to be setting these NTFS Permissions up for every little file
I bring in.
So what that does is brings up what Microsoft calls a best practice.
Yes you can do it this way but there are more efficient ways to do it.
In general what we do is we create users.
We put the users into groups and then we give NTFS permissions to those groups in general when we're
setting up those A.F. as permissions we set them up on a per folder basis for individual groups.
Let me show you how this all works.
So first of all what I'm going to do is I'm going to apply NTFS Permissions not to an individual file
but to a folder so I'm going to right click on this folder and I'm going to go to properties.
Do you see sharing.
You ignore that.
That is a networking thing we cover that in other episodes.
There's no network here remember there's only one computer.
So we go to security.
Now what I want to do is I'm going to add in this case reviewer
and check names make sure the underline appears and you'll see that reviewer is on here by default it
gets read an execute list folder contents and read list folder contents is actually a very interesting
NTFS permission.
Without it you could get to those files but you can't actually open the folder and see what's in there.
So kind of interesting NTFS permission but an important one.
So what we've done here is we set up reviewer to have those particular permissions I'm going to hit
OK.
Let's go through this process one more time.
Except this time we're going to let the editors in their
so by default you'll see ret editors just get read in X Kulas folder contents and read permission.
Well we're going to do is give them the modified permission as well.
They have to have that so that they could edit these videos and then save them in the same folder with
the same name.
So we hit apply and we hit OK.
And now we've got a basic set up and this is a very common type of set up that you'll see on a more
serious system that has a lot of users working on it.
Now the next thing I want to talk about is something called an Herron's.
Let me show you how this works.
First of all when we look at the properties of video you're going to see you see this guy right here
that's me.
I'm actually the person who created this folder.
I am the owner of this folder so by default whoever actually creates a folder can set up what other
people can do to it.
So as the owner I've got a lot of power.
Now what I want you to do is take a look.
When we see editor here you're going to see that there are two columns here allow and deny.
Let me show you how this works.
When I'm going to do is go into videos and I'm going to pick any one of these and remember I have not
set any NTFS permissions for this guy but when I go into properties and I go into security you'll see
that editor right here has the same permissions that we had said earlier but there's a big difference.
Look at the color of the checkboxes they're grayed out what's happening here is when you set NTFS permissions
for any one object anything else you create in there automatically gets those same permissions.
We call this inheritance here I make it even cooler that watch this song and right click right now new
folder you want to call it Timmy.
Now I just made this folder poof I just made him.
So we go into properties and go into security.
You're going to see that these are all the same permissions that we had before here.
Here's here's me.
I've got full control because I'm the owner.
Here's editors with their modify permission and there's reviewers with the same permissions we said
before and that's the power of inheritance.
Anything that you put into one folder will automatically take on the NTFS permissions of that particular
folder.
So let's go ahead and take a minute right now and let's make sure you understand the basic NTFS permissions.
NTFS Permissions vary whether you have a folder or a file.
Let's go through those for a folder.
First of all full control means you can do anything you want.
Modify enables you to read write and delete both files and some folders within that folder read and
execute enables you to see the contents of the folder and any sub folders as well as run executable
programs.
List folder contents enables you to see the contents of the folder and any sub folders.
Read enables you to view a Folders contents and open any file in the folder.
And last write enables you to write to files and create new files and folders NTFS permissions for a
file start with full control.
And as you might imagine it enables you to do anything you want.
Modify enables you to read write and delete that file read and execute allows you to open and run the
file read allows you to open the file.
And last write enables you to open and write to the file.
Now inheritance there are some rare situations where you might want to say look I might be putting more
stuff in here but I don't want this inheritance thing.
So let me show you what that's all about.
So what I have here is I've got Let's go and cancel this.
So here in this Fred folder let me go right back I'm going to Slik properties go into security and for
some reason anything underneath this Fred folder I don't want that inheritance to go anymore.
So what I can do in that case is I can click on edit and that's what these little denie buttons are
for the denied checkbox say look anything from here on down.
Stop the inheritance for those particular permissions.
Generally using the deny button is pretty much proof that you haven't organized your folders well and
you're not doing your NTFS.
Right.
But there are situations where it might be needed.
So be aware that the deny button turns off inheritance right.
Now the last thing I want to talk about with NTFS is the idea of well I've got this folder and it's
got a number of files and folders within it that have these different NTFS permissions.
What happens if I move it or copy it.
So this action varies depending on how you're moving and copying and whether you're moving or copying
even.
Now before we get too deep in this I will make it easy for you if you have something with NTFS permissions
and you copy it to a thumb drive with X fat or fat 32.
That's easy when you copy it over there all the permissions go away because fat doesn't support NTFS
Permissions where things get a little bit more challenging is when you're moving and copying within
different NTFS formatted partitions.
To help you understand the issues with moving and copying and NTFS Permissions what I have here are
two physical drives.
Now for demonstration I'll say this has dried see and this is Dr..
What's important is that they are different drive letters now to get ourselves started.
I've got this little orange cube here.
And his job is to act as an object he could be a file he could be a folder.
I don't really care what he is.
He is an NTFS object that has NTFS permissions.
This little purple cylinder is going to be the actual NTFS permissions that are on the original of this
object whatever it might be.
So let's start doing some moving and copying.
First of all if we copy from one drive letter to another the copy will end up over here.
But it does not keep its NTFS permissions.
It will take on whatever NTFS Permissions are in the folder that it gets copied into.
Now if we move it when you move it he loses all of his NTFS permissions and again he takes on whatever
permissions are in the folder he gets copied to.
Now things change a little bit when you're moving and copying within the same drive letter.
If we're going to make a copy when you copy it like this he'll go ahead and you'll get the copy but
again he'll lose his NTFS permissions if you move it.
This is the only time out of all four of these little things we've just done where the NTFS Permissions
actually go along with the object itself.
The reason I'm harping on this is pretty simple.
We know that comp he'll wants you to know it from the objectives and we know that it's an issue that
comes up with people time and time again.
So NTFS Permissions are powerful and amazing tools and to be honest with you we really just barely touched
on it mainly because he only asked for a small amount.
You'd have to be going into your NCSA to really tear it apart.
Make sure you're comfortable with your different NTFS permissions and make sure you're comfortable with
what happens with NTFS permissions when you move them and copy them.