Fix Access denied to the hard drive, and the security tab missing under properties

When your drives, external hard disks, and USB flash drives are infected or suffer from a power failure etc. In most cases the “drive becomes accessible”. and the following error might occur unexpectedly. In this article, we shall discuss the steps to Fix Access denied to the hard drive, and the security tab missing under properties. Please see how to Fix no BitLocker Recovery tab in Active Directory, and how to Restrict Access to USB Drives.

Also, Windows can prevent you from accessing the files and folders on the disk. When you are prompted with the error, take a look at the following scenarios to determine the specific fix accordingly.

On the Driver properties sheet, under general, you would see the file system used.

Below is a different error and the file system here is CDFS.

Also, see How to Fix Taskbar Icons Missing on Windows 11, how to Set Google as default: How to set a browser as default in Windows 10, and how to fix “Windows deployment cannot continue, the operating system is missing via MDT deployment“.

Scenario 1:

As you can see, due to security policies configured by the organization, the file is inaccessible due to DriveLock implementation.

Therefore, proceed to troubleshoot this as it relates to your environment

Scenario 2:

When the following error is displayed in the diagram below, most times this has nothing to do with the permission as described. UDF, FAT, CDFS, etc., does not offer any Security in terms of permissions.

Change your File system to NTFS and you will see the security tab. Before you change the File system, save all your data somewhere in case it gets corrupted!

This specific error has nothing to do with permission or the missing security tab as claimed.

Scenario 3:

Unable to find File Explorer in the Group Policy Editor when resolving the security tab missing under properties.

Note: This can be hidden by administrators and you would not have permission to view it. See “Update Policy Settings: Unable to find File Explorer in the Group Policy Editor when resolving security tab missing under properties”, and how to Update central store for Group Policy Administrative Templates.

I hope you found this blog post helpful on Access denied to the hard drive helpful. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment section.