A Windows file server has run out of space. In the interim the administrator is moving several archived confidential folders that have been encrypted off the file server and onto an older servers…

If the temporary server was formatted as NTFS, the EFS encryption would typically be retained upon moving, preserving the confidentiality of the files.

A power user, even with elevated privileges, cannot bypass EFS encryption without the proper decryption key or certificate if the files remain encrypted.

When files encrypted with EFS are moved from an NTFS volume to a FAT32 volume, the encryption is automatically removed because FAT32 does not support EFS or other advanced NTFS features. This loss of encryption means that anyone with standard access to the files on the FAT32 volume can then open and modify them without needing the original encryption key.

An administrator on the temporary server could take ownership but would still generally not be able to decrypt EFS files without the correct certificate, assuming the encryption itself was not removed.