Resetting Child Folder and File Permissions Recursively in Windows using PowerShell

Take Ownership of all Files and Folders

The first script takes ownership of all the files and folders in our archive folder:

 takeown /a /r /d Y /f '\\my-nas-drive\archive\jobs\'

You can find more information about the command takedown at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/takeown

But basically this command gives ownership to the Administrator group /a, performs a recursive operations /r, suppresses any confirmation prompt /d Y, for the specified path /f

Reset Permissions

Our second script fetches every folder in our $FolderPath (line 3), loops through each folder (line 5), fetches the Access Control List ($acl line 10) for the object. Then the key process are lines 11-12 where we turn on permission inheritance and remove the current permission on the folder.

We repeat this process again but for all the files in the current folder (lines 18-20)

clear
$FolderPath = '\\my-nas-drive\archive\jobs\'
$folders = Get-ChildItem -Path $FolderPath -Directory -Recurse

foreach ($folder in $folders)
{
    Write-Host "Directory: " -ForegroundColor Yellow -NoNewline
    Write-Host $folder.FullName -ForegroundColor Green

    $acl= get-acl -Path $folder.FullName
    $acl.SetAccessRuleProtection($false,$true)
    Set-Acl -Path $Folder.FullName -AclObject $acl

    $files = Get-ChildItem -Path $folder.FullName -File
    foreach ($file in $files){
        Write-Host "           " $file.FullName -ForegroundColor Gray

        $acl= get-acl -Path $file.FullName
        $acl.SetAccessRuleProtection($false,$true)
        Set-Acl -Path $File.FullName -AclObject $acl
    }

}

NOTE: This script is not quick. It took over 18 days to processes our 30TB of data and three million files!