Win7-10, can you mount an NTFS hard drive and ignore permissions like Win XP?

You can not mount ntfs so that permissions are disabled, I suppose (I am even in doubt that this was possible in Win XP).

But you can bypass file permissions as Administrator, or any other account possessing backup privilege. You can even mount ntfs volume readonly (to be sure you did not accidentally change anything on the volume while you copied files) and still be able to bypass the volume permissions.

backup privilege doesn't allow a generic use of files, like text editing, but allows to copy files, and that's what you want.

However, a typical application that you might want to use to copy files, e.g. Windows Explorer, has not been learned to use the backup privilege, because this privilege has been designed for ... backup 8-O , so you need a workaround(s).

First of, when you know the source directory location, you may just

C:\> robocopy /e /r:0 /b SRC DST

/b makes robocopy to use backup privilege for copying and bypassing permissions. But take care, even Windows 10 robocopy doesn't handle hardlinks, and handles directory junctions wrong. Windows 8 robocopy additionally doesn't handle symbolic links. You may need to recreate links manually.

Second of, when you need to the browse the source before copying.

To be more specific, let's assume you are using Windows Explorer. Run EnableSeBackupPrivilege from Explorer, this will enable backup privilege for Explorer. Then magic happens: Explorer begins to enter any previously inaccessible directory, including attached drive, [System Volume Information] on any drive, etc...

Explorer will still not be able to read from files, copy them, but filesystems become completely transparent. When you have done with browsing you can copy necessary files with robocopy.

You may try what effect the enabled backup privilege have on other applications.

E.g. dism correctly handles hard-, sym-links and directory junctions, and able to "capture" files if the backup privilege has been enabled for dism. You can migrate files from the source to the destination reliably, however, at the price of intermediate wim file.

UPD 21 Feb 2021: btw, Windows PE has backup/restore privilege enabled by default, that's why you can browse "guest" ntfs disks freely in WinPE.

I understand that this is an old question, but the answer can be helful for others.

You can't mount an NTFS volume ignoring ACLs on WinXP. However, running with administrators privileges on WinXP will effectively grant all permissions, included the one needed to browse an otherwise ACL-protected folder.

Windows 7 and later behave differently: even when using an administrator-level account, explorer.exe will immediately drop the elevated provileges, causing the UAC prompt for adding an user-specific ACL on the folder.

To work around the issue, you can use an alternate file browser as Explorer++, launching it with admin permission (ie: "run as administrator").