Taking Inventory of a File Server with PowerShell — Capacity Analysis and Access Permission (ACL) Auditing (archived 2026-08-30)

Abstract

A practical procedure for taking inventory of a file server with PowerShell. Covers capacity analysis and recording access denials, listing old files and extracting duplicate candidates by hash, permission auditing with Get-Acl and detecting broken inheritance, producing CSV reports, choosing between icacls and Set-Acl, and a safe change procedure for Set-Acl. Archived version of https://comcomponent.com/en/blog/powershell-file-server-acl-audit/, as published on 2026-08-30. The live article is maintained and may change after this date. First published 2026-07-18.