I have a hard drive with Windows XP SP3 installed on it. When the drive is connected through the standard SATA connector inside the laptop, everything works as expected.

However when I remove the drive from the laptop and connect the drive to the external USB adapter, almost all files / folders lose the 'Owner' field contents. I was wondering why could that be. I've tried two USB adapters and this happens on each. I could take the ownership of all of the files, but this would overwrite the Owner value (the Owner value that is present when the drive is accessed through standard SATA connector in the laptop).

//edit: if the hard drive is used through the USB adapter, I can't access most of the files, at least until I take ownership of the files (/folders).

This is how it looks like:

HDD inside USB adapter:

HDD inside laptop:

(note the Owner column)

//edit: some of the files on the first screenshot have Owner field filled up. That's because I took the ownership of those files / folders to be able to access the files on the hard drive.

//edit2: also, if the hard drive is connected through USB adapter and if I've took the ownership of some files by the 'ddd' user, then if i login as a different user (lets say 'eee' user), the owner field is _still_ empty:

ddd user: eee user: eee user can't access the 'ddd' folder.

Both users have Administrator priviledges.