OS X :: Hard Drives Locked Themselves And Won't Unlock?
Sep 16, 2010
Our Mac Pro crashed, and upon reboot, both the internal raid as well as the external firewire drive that happened to be plugged into the machine at the time, are both 'locked' and we cannot unlock them. We've tried toggling the 'user and permission' choices from the 'custom' setting that they are now showing to read/write... and it just snaps back to 'custom'!
Same if we try to change to just READ or just WRITE...etc...nothing...
Just a gray icon of a LOCK under the icons of the drives, and a warning anytime I try to access them, saying I don't have permission to do so.
I even unplugged the firewire drive and plugged it into another computer and it does the same thing!
And I even made a new ADMIN and tried changing it with that, to no avail.
Everytime I look at either of these drives, those 'users and permissions' toggles are back at 'custom' and they just won't relent!
Oh, and I also flashed PRam and 'Repaired permissions' on the boot drive [yes, the boot drive is working fine]
I need the media that is on these drive... a ton of video media on the internal raid, specifically... So I can't just repartition them from boot disk.
I use an external hard drive for Time Machine backups and to store some larger video files in a folder called Videos. The Videos folder on the external drive is now locked and I can't unlock it. I go to Get Info, hit the lock icon and enter my password, but the "Locked" checkbox is greyed out in the General section. In the Sharing and Permissions section, instead of displaying my name, it says "Fetching . . ." and I can't change the Privilege from "Write Only".
Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I have startup discs for os x and everything. My admin account has a password that i don't know.
I have secondary account thats not a admin and i don't know the password to that one either. everytime i turn on the computer i automatically log into the secondary account.
i have tried everything out there including the command-s window to reset the passwords but nothing works. my os x disc will not boot on startup by pressing c. i cannot use it with the computer on because it asks for a password.
this has happened a few times in recent weeks. I lock the screen on my MBP (mid 2009) and go do something for a few minutes. When I come back, the computer won't come back on. I have to hold down the power button for ~10 seconds and shut the computer down hard and then power it back on. What the heck is going on here?
I just got a new macbook pro, and when I popped my old secondary hard drive in, I notice that half of my mp3 files are now shown with a little lock next to them. I can manually un lock them one at a time, but I'm a professional DJ, and I have thousands of files. how to unlock an entire directory in one fell swoop? I didn't lock them to begin with, so this is aggravating.
I cannot save bpm or cue points to files while they're locked. My serato scratch live software will also not save overviews while they're locked.
Info: MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I have somehow lost all my iTunes. When I go to play something - I get the grey exclamation mark comes up. In trying to restore from Timw Machine, I find my iTunes is now unlocked. I have gone through the process of unlocking every file I can find and changing all the permissions to read and write. However it is still locked.
a) how to unlock iTunes using a defferent technique to that which I have tried.
b) tell me EXACTLY (step by step - because I am a mac newbie!) how I restore from my Time machine preferably. I do have my full collection (about 15 000 pieces) on my ipod if I need that - but I am terrified of loosing everything?
After upgrading to an SSD, i was having problems with restoring files from Timemachine. i fiexed that by naming my ssd drive the same as the drive that was backedup using time machine. now, i can't seem to edite any of the files restored in Documents from the backup. not can i edit or add content inside the folders withing documents. i dont know whats going on. they appear lock and there is no way to unlock them. it says i will need to duplicate the items!
I unintentionally locked a file in Pages so now when I try to add additional information to that file and try to save it I get the message that I can't alter that file by adding additional information. How do I unlock a Pages file that has been locked?
I'm looking at the specs page for the MacBook Pro and it reads this...
Your MacBook Pro comes standard with a 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive. Choose a hard drive with a faster speed for greater performance. Or you can choose a solid-state drive that offers enhanced durability.
Basically suggesting that the HDD option has a performance advantage over the SSD, but is this the case? I always thought SSDs could read & write quicker because they use solid-state flash memory as opposed to hard disks.
I want to go with the 256GB SSD but I want to know how it ranks in speed.
After installing a new account on the internal harddisc after software problems, my MAC OS 10 went into lock. Not only the internal harddisc, but also my three external harddiscs. My MAc says I don't have the priviliges to unlock, which is not the case of course. If I go to 'info' I can unlock the lock icon on my user account, but from then on the MAC does not respond to any commands or changes I would like to make.
External 120Gig firewire Hard drive became locked during one of the several swelling battery failures on my 17" MacBook Pro.
System info: Mac Book Pro 17" 10.6.4 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
I have done the best I could with the available threads. Drive is still locked. I may be missing a critical step in the process. Is it possible for someone to walk me through it?
My system crashed and it took be a day and a half to get it working again: Lion wouldn't reinstall from the DVD, from the internet or from the Lion USB stick I made. Finally I pulled out all the drives and put in only a Lion drive I had set aside as a safety. This worked. My main system drive and the Time Machine drive display a little lock icon and when I open Info, their permissions are all listed as "custom." Worse, when I try to change them, I can't. All my data is on those drives and Lion won't even let me open them to transfer files. How do I change the permissions?
Info: Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2), MacPro2,1 Quad-Core Intel Xeon
I bought a Seagate Free Agent Go Flex External drive. I transferred all my files from my previous external HD.
When I went to access my folders on my external HD, the folders are all locked, with Sharing and Permission section in the Information "Everyone: Read" only! I can't change any of the information or move things! All of them are locked and "read only." I know how to change it, but only manually, individually. I have several hundreds of folders and I don't want to manually change all of them to "Read & Write." Is their a way to let me re-set the folders to "Read & Write" easily??
I used migration assistant to move users and programs to my new mac pro from my old one. Everything seemed fine until I tried to use handbrake to copy my dvd for use with my apple tv. I have a dedicated drive for my movies called itunes to where The dvd being converted copies there. It wouldn't let me. I looked at the permissions and low and behold its locked. Whats weird is there is a user listed as unknown that has read access. I cannot delete this user. Any ideas as to how or why this is there? How can I remove this user?
So I had some issues with my system and finally decided it was best to get a new hard drive and reinstall osx. When I did this though, my second internal hard drive became locked. I have gone into the Get Info for the drive and it has the Privilege set to Custom. I unlock the lock in the lower right corner and try to change custom to Read & Write, but it does not make the change. I am at a loss on where to go from here.
I am on a MacPro running 10.5.7
Also, which I havent noticed before, the icon of the drive has a small silver lock in the lower left corner. This is the icon on the desktop itself.
For some reason, my desktop icons are stacked on my hard drive. I am able to drag the items to the trash or another folder but I cannot move them to another location on the desktop. I did check the "get info" on the desktop and the "locked" option is not checked. Any file that I download or save immediately appears in the top right corner of the desktop on top of the HD icon. Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening?
I have a Imac 20 with a small 3.5 hard drive and I have bought a bigger 360 gig 3.5 hard drive to replace the old one. I have the new one in an external case with USB 2.0 right now. Is there some way I can transfer the entire contents of the old hard drive on to the new one and then swap out the old drive with the new drive and not miss a beat?
I have to hard drives in my powermac. And I am running out of space with the one that has the OS on it.
I want to make the 2 internal hard drives i have appear as one so i can still install and use things that say "must have mac OS installed on this drive to use" or whatever.
i've heard of people using RAID to join them, but i want details on how i could do this.
I can't seem to edit any pictures with Preview anymore since I upgraded to Lion. Every time I try to save an image after resizing or whatever, it says the file is locked. If I check the info of the file the "locked" checkmark is unchecked. And I have all the permissions to the file. Tried everything, switched the "lock after 2 weeks" thing of in Time Machine (even though tha would probably not help: images I took today are still "locked" in Preview), tried copying them and then saving them, and tried to lock them and then unlock them, but I can't seem to edit and save them.
Getting a message within photoshop that files cannot be saved as they are locked. I check the same files with 'Get Info' and the locked file box is unchecked. I have changed file permissions on the entire disc so that everyone can read/write but still the same message. Tried terminal command to uncheck flags also to no avail. I can do save as but a little frustrating. Is there a workaround to get all my files back onside?
This is a new disc that I may have installed without due care to permissions/ownership when I formatted it.
HDD Bay 1: 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s; 7200 rpm; 8MB cache
OSX: Tiger
I need to upgrade to Snow Leopard to be able to use newer Leopard & above only versions of software ie FCP, Aperature, etc.
The issue is that I would like to keep the Tiger OSX as I run Pro Tools LE 7 on it. Upgrading to Snow Leopard would render Pro Tools LE 7 incompatible and I would have to buy it again.
So here's what I'm thinking. I would like to install a secondary HDD in Bay 2 and install Snow Leopard on it.
Is it possible to have OSX Tiger on the HDD in Bay 1 and have OSX Snow Leopard on the HDD Bay 2? Could they each be a different startup to be selected via System Preferences or at bootup? I would only want to run one OS at any given time.
If so what would be a workflow for installing the 2nd HDD and setting it up with OSX Snow Leopard.
Also, compatible hard drives for the 2006 Intel Mac Pros seem to be harder to find now. I called Apple and they no longer sell any compatible internal HDDs.
I'm planning on getting a Mac Pro with multiple hard drives and was thinking about having a main drive for Leopard and documents, one for music, one for video and another for Windows. I was just curious to see how others have theirs set up and any if there is advice to be shared.
I would have thought, given the pace of innovation, that we might have had hard drives larger than 1 TB by now. Has anyone heard of any potential rumors?
Looking at Seagate site, even newegg, the hard drives for mac are incredibly more expensive. I doubt the interface is different, so the only other option is how it is formatted.
If the drive is formatted differently, at an extra cost, I am curious if OSX is capable of formatting externals on its own? Can I buy a standard drive and format it natively in OSX?
I only ask, because after coming from Home Premium, several hardware utilities are non-existent.
I have a 15" MBP with 256ssd installed and a 13" MBP with a 250gb 5400 drive. I prefer to use the 13" as my main computer and want to take the 256ssd drive from the 15" and put it in the 13". Then take the 250gb drive from the 13" and put it in the 15" How hard is this to do? I've not done something like this before. Since I'm swapping an ssd with a regular hd is it as easy as following the instructions on this forum, remove the screws and swap the drives? After that's done I'll need to overwrite the 15" software and load the OS and drivers for the 13" on to the ssd drive. Is that as simple as taking the restore disk for the 13" put it in the drive and reinstall the OS? Or, should I just take it to the local authorized Apple Dealer and have them do it? (We don't have an Apple store nearby.
