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How do I unlock my external hard drive?

Multiple locked hard disks – completely unaccessible... HELP!!

I have read what has been written here and haven't – unless I missed something – come across this issue ever before...

Background: Mac Pro, Snow Leopard. 4 x Internal 1 TB drives, 5 x external.

I was using Disk Utilities and doing a Permisssions Repair on the main System disk – which went OK, with only some small repairs being necessary.

On closing Disk Utilities I noticed that ALL of the other disks had suddenly become "locked" – showing the small padlock icon lower left hand side.

Using Command + I, I opened the Information panel for one of the disks, clicked the Padlock icon at the bottom right and so “unlocked” it. My disks are generally formatted as OS Journalled. I did not see or find any other “Locked Check Box” – as I might have expected.

The “Permissions” for all users were set as “CUSTOM” and regardless of what I tried – including the “Ignore ownership of this volume” and using the cogged wheel button (in which the the only text was “reverse changes” – but was greyed out).

On clicking on the “Custom” notice and trying to change to any of the three other options, nothing happened.

I have tried removing the drives and doing a Disk Utilities check on them using another comp. and the catalogue structures are fine.

Currently the Master Hard Drive is out of the machine – it was not locked in any way – and I have been backing it up – it’s information is intact.

I DO have a Time Machine back-up pf that disk when it was working from 48 hours before. I therefore intend to use this now in the hope that “somehow” this will also revert back the access to the other disks – but somehow I don’t “feel” that this should work because patently something has changed post that time which has locked the disks…

I have tried booting from the System Disks and doing the Disk Utilities check that way and again – no change.

I am not able to access the disks or their contents in any way. However they all show up correctly on the desktop.

I have tried creating a new Admin Account using the Terminal Commands – zilch.

I have even tried some of the Terminal code solutions offered here and this is what one of these says…

drwxrwxr-x@ 19 714 Apr 23 22:08 DAEMON
drw-rw-r-T@ 68 2380 Apr 16 01:03 LAXSHMI
lrwxr-xr-x 1 1 Apr 23 23:11 MAGISTER_2 -> /

… Where DAEMON is “open” and is an external back-up drive, MAGISTER is a new system installed Hard drive / Snow leopard and LAXSHMI is juts typically ONE of the locked drives.

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this before…?

Does anyone please have an idea or a solution…?

Many thanks.

___________________

Situation resolved – using info on this forum plus other trial and error.
 
Help newbie with and afraid of terminal

I am locked out of my drive HFS+ journaled

J-Patrick-Morans-MacBook:Volumes jpmoran$ ls -alO /Volumes
total 8
drwxrwxrwt@ 4 root admin hidden 136 Apr 29 22:10 .
drwxrwxr-t 29 root admin - 1054 Apr 29 19:38 ..
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin - 1 Apr 29 21:02 MacBookHD -> /
drw-r--r-- 15 jpmoran staff uchg 578 Apr 8 12:34 OffSite_Backup_1
J-Patrick-Morans-MacBook:Volumes jpmoran$ id
uid=501(jpmoran) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),204(_developer),100(_lpoperator),98(_lpadmin),81(_appserveradm),80(admin),79(_appserverusr),61(localaccounts),12(everyone),401(com.apple.access_screensharing),402(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1),403(com.apple.sharepoint.group.2)
J-Patrick-Morans-MacBook:Volumes jpmoran$ echo "done"


What do I need to type into the terminal to reset the permissions? right now when I use Control-I all the permissions are custom and any changes I make will not stick.
 
Thanks, I'll give it a try. Will the script work on folders as well? I was able to duplicate the contents of the drive on my desktop. the permissions are still wacked, but it may be safer for me to try it on the folder first?
 
It only works on drives, and the worst-case scenario is that it doesn't work at all. It won't touch any data unless it's already NTFS formatted and you go through the several layers of pop-ups warning you against reformatting a drive.
 
BlueRevolution said:
It only works on drives, and the worst-case scenario is that it doesn't work at all. It won't touch any data unless it's already NTFS formatted and you go through the several layers of pop-ups warning you against reformatting a drive.
Click to expand...

BlueRevolution said:
Interesting. Well, give this a try first. It runs most of the suggestions mentioned in this thread automatically.
Click to expand...


i tried using this and got

Original permissions:
total 8
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 May 6 18:25 Macintosh HD -> /
d---r-xr-x 17 patrickb patrickb 612 May 5 19:18 Pats HD

Macintosh HD: writable
Pats HD: permission denied
Pats HD: currently formatted as HFS +
Pats HD: permission repair attempted
Pats HD: still borked 'cos of touch: HD/.permissions_test_file: No such file or directory

New permissions:
total 8
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 May 6 18:25 Macintosh HD -> /
-rw-r--r-- 1 patrickb admin 0 May 6 19:12 Pats
d---r-xr-x 17 patrickb patrickb 612 May 5 19:18 Pats HD

my problem is the HD is being read by norton, but the icon for the HD doesnt show up on my desktop or in the finder...any help? id appreciate it
 
BlueRevolution said:
That's a bit of a different problem, and not something that the script was designed to solve.

Try verifying the disk in Disk Utility.
Click to expand...

Verifying volume “Pats HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Pats HD appears to be OK.
Mounting Disk

1 HFS volume checked
Volume passed verification

im lost, i have no idea what to do, and i have extremely important work files on the HD that i need access to...someone please help. Thank you.
 
It didn't appear on your desktop after Disk Utility finished running? If the partition appears in the lefthand list in Disk Utility but with a grey name, select it and click Mount.
 
BlueRevolution said:
It didn't appear on your desktop after Disk Utility finished running? If the partition appears in the lefthand list in Disk Utility but with a grey name, select it and click Mount.
Click to expand...

nope it hasnt appeared..its in bold black, but the icon isnt there either...its a blank page looking icon with a dog eared corner...however right above it, the icon is there and its named seagate
 
sudo chmod 775 command

My external hard drive back-up only has certain folders locked - no idea why. Running the sudo chmod 775 command in Terminal on the hard drive doesn't unlock the files, but running the command on the individual files themselves does. Does anyone know a way of unlocking them all at once? There's hundreds...

I've tried the Apple Script program already - no joy.

Many thanks
 
You should be using 664 rather than 775 on files unless they're applications.

Instead, try running:

sudo chmod -R ug+rw [drag containing folder here]

The script is only designed to unlock entire drives, not individual files.
 
unlocking individual files

Many thanks. I actually just solved it by running BatChmod, running it to 'Clear Leopard's extra permissions (ACLs) - on Owner: root - and then running 'Unlock' and checking 'Apply to enclosed folders and files' checkbox. I guess that does the same thing you suggested?
 
Please Help with fixing read-only Time Machine Backup disk

Hi,

I seems tried everything that was said on this thread - no success.

My corrupted disk content looks like this after running ls -go

-r-------- 1 16 Jun 28 2009 .001b63aabe0b
-rw-rw-r--@ 1 12292 May 12 16:53 .DS_Store
drwx------ 3 102 Jun 28 2009 .Spotlight-V100
drwxrwxrwt@ 3 102 Sep 16 2009 .TemporaryItems
d-wx-wx-wt@ 2 68 May 12 16:53 .Trashes
-rw-r--r-- 1 0 Jun 28 2009 .com.apple.timemachine.supported
drwx------ 2 340 May 12 16:53 .fseventsd
drwxr-xr-x+ 3 102 Jun 28 2009 Backups.backupdb

Trying the magic Apple solution gives:
bash-3.2# sudo chflags 0 Time\ Machine\ Backups\ 1
chflags: Time Machine Backups 1: Read-only file system

and every trying to run chown/chmod and so on produces the same message: Read-only file system

running ls -ls on /Volumes gives:
8 lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 May 18 08:23 Macintosh HD -> /
0 drwxrwxr-x 6 _unknown _unknown 374 May 17 23:43 Time Machine Backups
0 drwxrwxr-x 7 _unknown _unknown 476 Sep 17 2009 Time Machine Backups 1

The problematic disk WD USB 2.0 called "Time Machine Backups 1" is formatted as HFS+ (Case-sensitive + Journaled).

How do I fix it? Fighting with this for a day already.

Thanks a lot for your help!
 
Have you tried repairing the disk in Disk Utility? That may have been suggested before, but "everything" isn't too specific when the thread is 5 pages long.
 
Yes, that's what I tried to do in the first place. It failed. After it says that it fails, I can see the mounted disk with all its content, but its read-only (read-only file system - what does it mean?) I tried almost all suggestions to change it to read/write, but unsuccessfully. It says on all chmod/chown and so on commands - couldn't complete the operation - read-only file system. :(

I have half a year backups there and wouldn't want to erase and re-format it as DiskUtils suggests in the end of repairing session. BTW, i cannot copy from there anything, though i can see everything.

Thanks for your help
 
lock on my external disk

After getting the skript file my locked disk opened, but several folders are still locked. In the information it says reading and writing permition to "unkown".
What to do?
Here is the script:

Original permissions:
total 8
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root admin 0 May 19 10:44 Back
drwxrwxr-x 19 root admin 714 May 19 12:16 Back up
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root admin 0 May 19 11:44 Macintosh
drwxrwxr-x 4 root admin 136 May 19 12:16 Macintosh HD
drwxr-x--- 27 rainerpusch staff 986 May 19 12:16 MyBook
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 May 19 08:06 Ohne Titel -> /
drwxrwxr-x 33 rainerpusch staff 1190 May 19 12:16 RAID-System

Back: permission denied
Back up: writable
Macintosh: permission denied
Macintosh HD: writable
MyBook: writable
Ohne Titel: writable
RAID-System : writable
Back: currently formatted as Journaled HFS +
Back: permission repair attempted
Back: still borked 'cos of touch: /Volumes/Back/.permissions_test_file: Not a directory
Macintosh: currently formatted as Journaled HFS +
Macintosh: permission repair attempted
Macintosh: still borked 'cos of touch: /Volumes/Macintosh/.permissions_test_file: Not a directory
 
Thank You!

My computer is restoring itself as I type :) Not sure who originally supplied the answer to my problem but THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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