Question

External hard drive locked after Archive/Install Can't unlock

Asked by: DominionTech

I have a Lacie external hard drive that I've used for a while now with no issues. I performed an archive/install recently to fix some problems I was having and my external drive is now locked. I try to open it and it says "This folder could not be opened because you don't have sufficient access privileges". I tried on another machine to change permissions and it looked like it was working, but now the permissions say custom, they can't be changed and same error when trying to open it. You can't run repair permissions on it or any other repair tool because of it being locked. Any help would be appreciated!

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Asked On
2009-08-17 at 15:13:45ID24659833
Tags

Mac OSX 10.5.6

Topics

Apple Operating Systems

,

Apple Hardware

,

Removable Backup Media

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5
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: str8edgepunkerPosted on 2009-08-17 at 16:22:03ID: 25119207

Can you erase it using Disk Utility?

 

by: DominionTechPosted on 2009-08-17 at 16:45:08ID: 25119288

I could re partition it, but the data on this drive is important.

 

by: FDomingos88Posted on 2009-08-17 at 19:12:55ID: 25119742

 

by: pheidiusPosted on 2009-08-17 at 19:55:00ID: 25119866

Were you using file vault on the home folder that accessed this drive?

 

by: JabbaDowPosted on 2009-08-18 at 01:25:46ID: 25120978

You could probably change the permissions on the device from the command line. Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal

Once in Terminal, type "cd /Volumes" followed by "ls -l" which should list all the volumes mounted. Then, assuming you have admin priviliges you could type something along the lines of "sudo chown -R user:staff disk", where you would replace "user" with your short username and "disk" with the name of the mounted volume. The culprit of this problem is probably that you have a different UID now than you did before the archive and install. The above command should change the ownership of the files on the device to your new UID.

 

by: DominionTechPosted on 2009-08-18 at 06:10:06ID: 25122775

Tried using the terminal solution with error "Operation not permitted"

 

by: DominionTechPosted on 2009-08-18 at 06:30:39ID: 31616820

After running program I had to go in and change permissions to read/write, then I could access. Thanks a lot!

 

by: permissingPosted on 2009-08-27 at 15:10:38ID: 25203180

I just used BatChmod to correct this exact problem. It took a few tries 1.) First changing the permissions on the whole drive, 2.) Then changing permissions on each folder in the root directory. By doing step #2, all files and folders within each of the root directory folders were updated to the correct permissions.
http://www.macchampion.com/arbysoft/Download.html

FDomingos88 rocks!

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