Constant password request

[Jacob_DK]

Dear Mac experts. I have a problem that I can't solve. Please help.

1. My setup: iMac 27" 4GHz quad. core i7 (two weeks old) + OS El Capitan + LaCie 6Tbyte external HD.

2. My problem: Two weeks ago I got my new IMac. Used migration assistant to move all files from my MBP to the new iMac (excluding keychain). Started using my new iMac along with the external HD. No problem. The last few days I have been cleaning up my external HD and today I decided to use it also for a backup of my iMac using Time Machine. I regretted my decision and turned Time Machine off once it started backing up. However, since that everything I do on my external HD (moving files, deleting files etc) requires a password, which is extremely annoying. I've been searching the internet for hours trying to solve this issue - so far without any luck.

3. So far I tried this: First I tried resetting the password for the keychain in "keychain access" since I've had problems with that before. Didn't solve anything. Then I opened "Time Machine preferences" and removed the Lacie external HD from the backup disc list (since I read that once a HD has been used for Time Machine backup it's "owned" by Time Machine) and removed the old backup files from the Lacie external HD. Didn't solve anything. Then I right clicked the Lacie icon, clicked "get info" and changed the "sharing and permissions" settings - made myself the "owner" of the external HD (read & write privileges of course). Didn't solve anything. As of this moment I've continued by choosing also to "apply to enclosed items"...My iMac has been "thinking" ever since - over two hours....I'm not very optimistic.
PLEASE HELP ME MAKE THE CONSTANT PASSWORD REQUEST FOR CHANGES ON MY EXTERNAL HD GO AWAY! Thank you

 

[Weaselboy]

It sounds like when you setup Time Machine you told it to encrypt the backups by checking the box in the window below? Did you do that?

Open Disk Utility and select the external partition like in my screenshot. Does it say "Logical Volume" like mine does? If so, that means you encrypted the disk when you selected it in Time Machine. The solution is to go back to Disk Utility and reformat the disk in a non-encrypted format like plain Mac OS Extended (Journaled). When you encrypt the disk like this it will ask for the encryption password each time you mount the disk.

 

[Jacob_DK]

Thank you for the reply Weaselboy,
The external hard drive is not encrypted. When I look in disk utility I now (after I also "applied to enclosed items" under sharing and permissions under "get info" for the external HD) see the Lacie 6 TB RAID Set Volume OS X extended (photo 1) as well as two 3Gb partitions of the 6 TB HD (photo 2) called 3TB SATA external physical disk each.

PHOTO 1

PHOTO 2

 

[Weaselboy]

Do you see this "ignore ownership...." checkbox in Get Info for the Lacie drive? That will overcome any permissions issues on the volume.

If you already know this, you can ignore my comment... but what you have there in that Lacie is two 3TB hard drives that appear as one 6TB volume since they are setup in RAID0. El Capitan Disk Utility cannot manage RAID configuration any longer, so it needs to be done in Terminal. I'm a little concerned about those three Untitled volumes there. Were you messing around with formatting of this drive in Disk Utility?

 

[richard2]

Try the following:

Note:

• The following procedure requires that your OS X user account has administrative privileges.
• You mustn't drop the folder Backups.backupdb onto the window in step 5.

1. Open Terminal.
2. Type the following (but don't press return):
   
   sudo chown -Rh $(id -u):$(id -g)
3. Type a space.
4. In Finder, navigate to the root of your external disc.
5. Drop the folders you want access to onto the Terminal window.
6. In Terminal, press return.
7. Enter your OS X user account password if you're prompted to.

 

[Jacob_DK]

Hmm. Good question about the RAID configuration. I set the external HD up with this RAID0 disk configuration some years ago when I bought it for my MBP. I haven't (intentionally) changed this, but since El Capitan cannot manage this any longer, maybe it's best to format the external HD. My problem is, that I have 800GB stored on the disk and nowhere to put it while I format the external HD again (if this is necessary).
[doublepost=1459092890][/doublepost]....and will this solve the problem? I'm not sure.
[doublepost=1459093713][/doublepost]Hi again. I now checked the " Ignore ownership on this volume" and it works!!! Thank you. I would have preferred a solution where I didn't have to ignore ownership, but it's certainly better than no solution. Please write again if this solution working gives you information that could be used to allow changes on the external HD without having to ignore the ownership of the HD.

 

[Jacob_DK]

Maybe it's a stupid question, but will I be sure that doesn't create some irreversible change so that I risk loosing access to the external HD? I ask because I have 800Gb of info on the external HD including 30000 photos (basically my entire life), so I want to be sure I don't do anything I can't fix again.

 

[Sko]

There should be a check box "Ignore ownership on this volume" at the very bottom of the Get Info dialog for the external drive. Did you try that one?

 

[richard2]

The procedure will merely make you the owner of the files you drop onto the Terminal window. You can change a file's owner as many times as you wish.

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi again. I now checked the " Ignore ownership on this volume" and it works!!! Thank you. I would have preferred a solution where I didn't have to ignore ownership, but it's certainly better than no solution. Please write again if this solution working gives you information that could be used to allow changes on the external HD without having to ignore the ownership of the HD.

I think what is happening is you perhaps copied the user account and enclosed folders from the OS X drive to the external, and that would bring along the user account protections inside those folders. Ignoring ownership overcomes this. If you had just dragged the contents of a folder over without that user account, I don't think you would be having this issue.

You might try making a new folder at the base of the external, then drag everything out of the users folder(s) and into that folder to get away from the user account protections I think you are running up against.

How did you get the files to the external to begin with and exactly what are they?

 

[Jacob_DK]

I think you a absolutely right. Yesterday evening I copied all my photos from "photos" to my external HD. That's probably where everything went wrong, because I never had a problem with any of the thousands of photos from my Canon 7D camera on the external HD.
[doublepost=1459096526][/doublepost]So what do I do to overcome this issue? My backed-up photos from "iphoto" and "photo" are now in a folder called "pictures" on my external HD that I copied yesterday from my iMac HD (>users>jacob>pictures). Should I create a new folder called "pictures2" and drag all the content from "pictures" over to the new folder? Or will the content of the folder "pictures" (iPhoto library, Lightroom folder, Photos Library, Photos Library 2) still be protected?
The thing is, I didn't know yesterday how to properly backup my photos from "iphoto" and "photos" onto the external HD. Can you tell me how to do that? Thank you for all the help - I appreciate it

 

[Jacob_DK]

Thank you for the answer. I will try that