Adding Directories & Shares

The Directories tab in the profile editor is where you define what to audit. You can add local folders, UNC network paths, DFS paths, or use the built-in share discovery to automatically find all shares on a server or across an entire domain.

Adding Local Directories

Click the Browse button to open the standard Windows folder picker. Navigate to the folder you want to audit and click OK. The folder path will be added to the directory list.

You can add as many directories as you need. Each directory is listed with a checkbox — only checked directories are included when you run the audit. Use Select All and Deselect All to manage the list quickly.

Adding Network Shares Manually

You can type any UNC path directly — for example, \\fileserver01\shared or \\10.0.1.5\data. The path does not need to exist when you add it; the application will verify access when the audit runs.

DFS paths (e.g., \\domain.com\dfs\finance) are also supported.

Share Discovery

NTFS Permissions Auditor can automatically discover all available shares on one or more servers. This is especially useful when you need to audit an entire file server and don’t want to manually type every share path.

Discovery by Server Name

Enter the name or IP address of a file server (e.g., fileserver01 or 10.0.1.5) and the application will query the server for all available shares using the Windows NetShareEnum API. The discovered shares are listed so you can select which ones to include.

Administrative shares (like C$, ADMIN$) may appear in the results depending on your permissions on the target server.

Discovery by Domain

Enter one or more Active Directory domain names (separated by semicolons), and the application will:

1. Query Active Directory for all computer accounts in the specified domain(s)
2. Scan each discovered computer for available shares
3. Present a combined list of all shares found

This approach lets you audit all file shares across an entire domain in one profile. Note that large domains with many computers may take several minutes to scan. The application limits the number of computers it scans to prevent timeouts in very large environments.

Import from Text File

If you already have a list of paths (e.g., from a previous audit, a spreadsheet, or a script), you can import them from a text file. Each line in the file should contain one directory path.

Managing the Directory List

Once directories are in your profile, you can:

• Check/uncheck individual directories — Only checked directories are scanned when the audit runs. This lets you temporarily skip certain paths without removing them from the profile.
• Select All / Deselect All — Quickly toggle all directories on or off.
• Remove selected — Delete checked directories from the profile entirely.

The profile summary on the home screen shows all directories in the profile and a count of how many are selected.

Per-Directory Depth Limits

In addition to the global depth limit (configured in the Exclusion Options), you can set a depth limit on specific directories. This is done in the Exclude tab by adding a Directory Limit exclusion that specifies a path and a maximum depth level.

For example, you might want to scan \\fileserver\shared to 5 levels deep, but only scan \\fileserver\archive to 2 levels.

Tips

• Start broad, then narrow — Use share discovery to find everything, then uncheck the shares you don’t need. It’s easier to deselect than to manually type paths you might miss.
• Use one profile per server — This makes it easier to track changes over time and keeps audit results organized.
• Check network access first — If you get “Access denied” or “Network path not found” errors during the audit, verify that the machine running NTFS Permissions Auditor can reach the target server and that you have at least read access to the shares. See Authentication & Credentials if your current user doesn’t have the right permissions.