Lost access to secondary partition after Windows 8 Install ... for a few minutes.

I had to re install Windows 8 on my laptop due to some issues with the OS. I had two partitions on the local disk. So I copied all my data and installation source directories on to the secondary partition (E:) and did a fresh install of Windows 8 on to the C: Drive.

After the computer rebooted post installation, I could see both the drive letters C: and E: as they existed before the install. I clicked on the E: drive to get my software source folder and… I hear the loud Windows critical error sound effect, and a red cross with a message on the screen telling me that the drive "E:\ is not accessible" and "Access is denied".  Checked the properties of the drive and it said Zero bytes used. PANIC PANIC...I thought for a moment that I had lost all the data.

Luckily enough when I clicked on the security tab it said that I don’t have permission to view the properties of the object. Ray of Hope…. Clicked on Advanced and now it complained about being unable to display the current Owner. I took ownership of the drive and assigned my current logged in user account full access, ok, ok apply. Eureka..there was the familiar message on the drive icon, 90 GB used of 150 GB.

I believe the reason is that the local user account created immediately after install …the one which I used for logging in isn't part of the local administrators group. The ACL for the drive only has the SID for the local administrators group and hence windows refused to give access or even let me enumerate the drive contents.

If you do come across this issue please note that giving access to the local administrators group wouldn't give the newly created user access to the drive as by default it’s not part of the local administrators group. You will have to either add the current logged in user to the ACL of the Drive or add yourself to the administrators group and then log off and log back in to access the drive.

You might get an error about the recycle bin on the secondary drive being corrupted. You can just empty the bin and if required deleted the folder from the root of the drive.