Experience: Windows11, NTFS USB Drive, --format 4, long file paths, and missing user permissions.

[JodiTheTigger]

tl;dr: Due to long path names, and using USB drive on different computer with different user accounts, whatever code applies the <machine>\Administrators and <machine>\Users --format 4 file and folder permissions, didn't work due to "path too long" issues

Not really a bug report, more leaving this here in case other people have similar issues on Windows 11

---

Edition	Windows 11 Pro
Version	23H2
Installed on	‎11/‎12/‎2022
OS build	22631.3235
Experience	Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22687.1000.0

Initial experience

• drives originally created with winfsp v1.9 and securefs 0.13.1 on my old Windows 10 pro computer in 2022.
• new computer
• decided to install the latest winfsp (2023: v2.0)
• mounted my first usbdrive with securefs 0.13.1 (using winfsp 2023, but not sure, going off memory sorry)
• everything is fine
• unmount, download securefs 0.14.3
• mount second drive (prettry sure was using 0.14.3, but might have been 0.13.1)
• permission denied errors spam the mount window :-/ (https://github.com/netheril96/securefs/issues/76)
• oh no

So I try to fix

• notice folder permissions have weird users (S-12345-4343-234324-2424 type name, normally that shows when it's a user id that's not known by the running OS)
• tried to take over or reset the permissions via explorer, but couldn't due to LONG PATH ISSUE (https://github.com/netheril96/securefs/issues/163)
• tried to use TAKEOWN in the command window, but that also fails due to LONG PATH ISSUE
• Still fails even if I enable the Long Path registry key

Gave up, spent far too long renaming directories to a so I could delete them manually (should have just NTFS reformatted the drive)

• Tried setting up a new secure drive using --format 3 but found out that using rsync via windows shares goes really, really, really slow (dunno if it's a --format 3 issue like https://github.com/netheril96/securefs/issues/54, or just due to not being the faster --format 4)

So in the end I deleted the --format 3 folder, and went back to --format 2 keeping in mind I might get this permission denied error in the future when I change computers.

The first drive worked fine the entire time. So I suspect it was me using mismatched winfsp/securefs software combo, or there might be an issue in the latest securefs/winfps

I now use ROBOCOPY to copy the raw unmounted securefs directory between USB drives, as this does support long file names

[netheril96]

Can you try running TAKEOWN with \\?\ prefixed path? That is, if the directory is D:\a\b\c, use \\?\D:\a\b\c instead (only back slash works, and the path must be absolute).