Firewire drives are locked in custom mode

I did and archive and reinstall on my notebook hard drive and after completing it all my external firewire drives are locked and in custom mode. I am unable to change them to read/write. I can unlock the drives, but appears that it has no effect. When I try to access the drives it tells me I have insufficient privileges. I have run apple disk utility and disk warrior on permissions with no success.

I just had a client who encountered this. What causes it and is there a simpler way to resolve it?
My client had 6 drives that had all their permissions set to custom and they were all in a locked state.
How is that even possible at all and why doesn't the permissions routine in Drive Utility solve it?
This was a seriously frightening ordeal and had I not found this thread all the data on those drives might have been lost.
Does anyone have any explanations?
As for the above fixes, I was able to utilize the terminal to solve the issue but not with any ease. I had to attempt it numerous times per drive and after about 20 to 30 attempts, I was able to finally get them all unlocked.

Similar Messages

My External Drives are locked

dor some reason my external drives are locked and I can read only.
I am the administrator and only user on the computer.
how do I unlock them ?

You can also unlock with a simple Terminal command. Launch Terminal from your Utilities folder, then issue this command:
chflags nouchg /Volumes/"Name of Drive"
If that doesn't clear lock then it may be necessary to run the command as a super user do command:
sudo nouchg /Volumes/"Name of Drive"
That requires you to give your admin password.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Computer randomly locks up when firewire drives are connected?

Here's what I have:
- 2011 27" iMac i7
- 2011 15" MacBook Pro i7
I recently replaced all of my USB hard drives with Firewire drives, mostly as a speed and simplification measure. Under USB, I had to have a series of hubs which seemed to slow things down pretty dramatically, as well as cause a lot of weird behavior, like randomly ejecting. And, of course, there was the inevitable birds nest of wires. So, since there was no way to add USB ports to the iMac, except for hubs, I decided to move FireWire and daisy chain them.
This was all connected to a dedicated iMac workstation, the MacBook was never connected to the drives.
The drives were added a few days before a complete system overhaul was done. The system had been acting funny. We're little things here and there (finder often had to be relaunched after a restart, wifi was not able to automatically connect, etc.), and the system was starting to lock up on a somewhat regular basis. So, Lion was installed fresh and nothing was restored from Time Machine except for a few applications here and there (nothing system related). Once the system was all freshly installed, the little quirks were gone, but the random locking up was not. And it was getting worse.
So, I did some of the trouble shooting I had done in the past; created a new user, repaired permissions, repaired the disk, etc. It wasn't fixing anything, just getting worse. I finally did an extended Apple Hardware Test and got the error: 4M0T/4/40000003: HDD-1285
I couldn't find anything on the web about it. So I called AppleCare, they didn't know what it was either. So I took the computer into the Apple Store. They eventually got back to me saying the hard drive and the fan had failed and that they were in the process of fixing it.
However, in the mean time, I moved the MacBook Pro over to the workstation where the iMac had been. Low and behold, within a few hours, I was seeing exactly the same symptoms I'd seen on the iMac. If the Firewire drives were plugged in, the computer would randomly lock up, and again, not even necessarily when the drives were reading or writing. It appears to be completely random. Sometimes specific applications will lock up, like Mail, VLC or System Preferences. Force quitting the application has no effect. The window won't disappear, even if I attempt to log out or shut the computer down. The screen will change to the grey background, but the window will never go away. It'll just sit there with the pin wheel forever. The only option at this point is to force the system to shut down with the power button.
This only happens when Firewire is connected.
I've tried swapping out the cable with no luck, the same problem is true. I have five drives daisy chained like this:
WD MyBook 2TB --> WD MyBook 2TB --> WD MyBook 2TB --> LaCie d2 Quadra v3 2TB --> LaCie d2 Quadra v3 2TB
Now, admittedly, I have never daisy chained, so I don't know if I've made some bad mojo for myself by my device order, or by mixing brands or something, or if it's even possible that maybe one of the drives is faulty and it's screwing things up for me. I just don't know, and troubleshooting is challenging becuase I can't make the problem happen, it just happenes whenever it feels like it.
I have to get this issue resolved. I could switch back to USB, but I'd hate to do that because I spent a substantial amount of money on the drives specifically to avoid using USB
Insight into this would really be appreciated.

I am having the exact same problem. Th eone difference is that on occasion, iTunes downloads my playlists yet not the associated songs in the playlist.

Firewire drives are un-mounting

I have a fall 2008 imac - running 10.6.3, have two external firewire drives from g-technology.
all of my data is on the external firewire drives (itunes, documents and photos). the problem is that for the last three weeks - the drives have been un-mouting randomly
I have reviewed the console logs, reset the PR-RAM and no luck. Anyone have any suggestions on how i can research the root cause?

Just a very basic idea. Are your Firewire cables in good shape? Connections OK? Has your power supply been stable lately (any brownouts, etc)? Have you recently done any updates or software installs on your iMac?
Regards,
Steve M.

Crashes when Firewire Drives are mounted

For some reason now Logic crashes (hangs...not responding) when i boot Logic with my one firewire drive mounted. When i unmount the drive and then boot Logic it works fine. THen i re mount it and open my project.
Is there a fix for this?

Here's what I think is going on...
You wrote:
If i boot logic and then mount the drive it works fine.
Logic keeps a file (somewhere) that remembers the most recently opened songs/projects. I think this file is corrupt. I have no idea what the file is called, where it's located, but I think it's corrupt. Bascially, when you launch Logic but the drive to which a recent song isn't mounted/not available, that song will disappear from Logic's recent song list. But I have the feeling that Logic hasn't totally forgotten about the existence of that song. So when the drive is mounted and Logic loads up, it might just be trying to find the drive where the song lives but something gets screwy in the process.
Here's what I suggest:
a) quit Logic if it's running
b) mount the drive
c) copy the entire project to your internal HD
d) launch Logic
e) open the song from your HD
f) if this works without crashing, re-save the project to your FW drive under a new name
g) go to Logic's recent song list and count the number of songs in the list. Let's say it's 20 songs in the list...
h) hold option for one second and create a NEW song (this will be Logic's "default" song)
i) save it to your FW drive as a simple song (not project) called "a"
j) now save it 20 more times, changing the name each time, i.e., "b", "c", etc. What you're attempting to do is completely clear Logic's recent song list of all previous song titles with something known to be "benign"
k) re-load your real song as saved to your FW drive in step F above
l) if this works, quit Logic without saving
m) re-boot the computer
n) make sure the FW drive is mounted
o) launch Logic and load the song from step F from the FW drive
If all that works, then I think my theory is right about the recent file list being corrupt.
If it doesn't work, well, [Elmer Fudd = ON] I twied and I twied...

Secondary drives are locked and unuseable

I can not access either of my 2 non-startup drives. One on an internal bay the other and external USB drive/esata drive. When I am logged in as a user I get an error message that states I do not have sufficient priveleges. When I log in as a root user I can access the drives, but only as read only. When I try to change permissions in any way, I can't. There is always a lock icon in front of the drive in Disk utility as well as the info panel. When I moved the USB drive to another computer it was also locked.Disk utility does not show any errors on the drive.
My startup drive works seems to work just fine.
This all started when I applied permissions to my startup drive. I did the permission repairs and reset the password which allowed the computer to work, but what now?

Never mind this post. I found and applied these two commands in terminal from my user account and after rebooting the drives work fine.
sudo chflags nouchg /Volumes/"my drive name" and sudo chmod 775 /Volumes/"my drive name"

All my hard drives (internal and external) have a small lock in the lower left corner of the icon and I don't have permissions to access. Permissions are set to 'Custom' in the get info window and I can't change them.

All my hard drives (internal and external) have a small lock in the lower left corner of the icon and I don't have permissions to access. I have 3 user accounts set up and I cannot access any of them. Permissions are set to 'Custom' in the get info window and I can't change them. Originally I had Snow Leopard installed on one hard drive and 10.5.8 installed on another. I started to have some problems accessing data between them and so I tried changing the permissions on ONE hard drive partition. The next thing I know, all my drives are locked (except the ones with the systems on them), the small lock appeared in the lower left corner of the drive icons and I don't have permissions to access any of them. In the get info window, permissions are set to 'Custom' and I can't change them.

There is suddenly a lock icon on my external backup drive!
Custom Permissions

All files are locked, a new entry in permissions and more

Following instructions from here on how to try to correct another issue, I was repair permissions and to boot in safe mode. Since then all kinds of things are messed up.
I had to reset PRAM because the home and boot screens were were all stretched out of whack (this situation has occured once before shortly after getting this new machine)
EVERY SINGLE DATA FILE created prior to this safe mode is now LOCKED. EVERY ONE!!!!!! If I try to save any file so far I have tested, I am told the file is locked and I do not have permissions. My user mode didn't have administrative control before, but I changed that because unlocking everything to use it was more complicated having to enter the username and password. New files created are also locked. However, a new Pages file I have tested shows locked but it will save to the same file with a CMD-S.
Having to unlock files to save work in them really slows work. Apple not allowing Save As on Apple apps is getting really tedious. I tried with a non-Apple app (PhotoShop) and its files are locked after creation. This means I have to unlock every stupid file before I can save it, then it relocks If I go into Get Info to unlock the file, as soon as i close that window, the file shows locked when I do a new Get Info. This is not a good user experience!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have hundreds of thousands of files used in publishing, graphics, photos, and music. I tried to save an existing Photoshop file back to the Desktop and was told I could not save because was locked - that I needed to unlock the file or enclosing folders. When Photoshop closes it says can't save Preferences because file is locked.
If I unlock the Sartup drive it relocks as soon as the Get Info window closes.
In Sharing and Permissions the user called Everyone has a custom settings and some files even have two Everyone entries. Newly created files have had the User with Read & Write and Staff and Everyone with Read Only. My user folder Get Info shows locked with the user, staff and everyone with Read & Write permmissions. If I unlock in Get Info it reverts to locked after I close the Info window.
Safari opens to the same page on this forum where another problem was discussed. I have reset selected items in Safari that I thought might have caused this, but no change.
Pages keeps opening a page that was thrown in the trash and is not even on the computer (at least doesn't show in the finder),
Numbers keeps opening a file that was opened and saved days ago.
iDVD will open the same project each time, even if something else has been worked on since.
I have cleared recent entries in these programs and the field keeps coming back when I open again.
I unchecked the Restore windows when quitting option in General Sys Prefs and when I open it again it is checked. I know that Lion will reopen a page if I quit without closing the window first. Now, at least with Apple apps, the same file opens now whether it exists or not as well as the new file I am opening by clicking on it.
I have run permissions check in Disk Utility several times.
It seems that it is affecting Apple apps that remember where there were last and the visiting history.
Autosave on apps other than Apple can't save because the files are locked and I get error messages.
iPhoto files saved on a firewire drive are also show locked but testing on a duplicate file, I found I can edit with PhotoShop and it will save the changes.
With Finale, it has saved the files, even though locked. The odd thing is that in the finder it shows the correct creation and modifided dates, but it shows an old last opened date. Pages documents show all three with correct dates/times.
I suspect there is at least one if not more Pref plist files that needs to be fixed, but I have now idea where to start.

HI,
Make sure you are logged in as the admin user.
Right or control click the MacintoshHD icon then click: Get Info
At the bottom of the Get Info window, click the gold padlock icon. You will be prompted for your admin password.
Under Privilege where you see: Read & Write "toggle" the arrows to set your permissions for system / admin etc.
Close the Get Info window.
Carolyn

Firewire drives all gone?

would love any info that might help.
i have three 250gb firewire drives dasiychained to my computer, and today i changed my ownership and permissions so that other users on the computer could not access those drives. i then restarted after installing the new java update, and none of the firewire drives will mount to the desktop. they're all there in disk utility and i can mount/unmount and eject them, hearing them spinning up and down as they should, so i know they're not physically damaged, but why cant i see them anymore?

You wrote: "everytime i tried to change anything it gave me an error code -60002, which i cant find any documentation on"That's a rare error code. A Google search finds exactly two references, both to the same post on another forum and without a solution.
I suspect you can't fix this while logged in as root because the immutable flag is set on the drives. If you log in as root and look at the Get Info window for the drives in question, suspect "Locked" will be checked in the top (General) panel and you can't change that. Correct?
You're going to have to start up in start up in single user mode to fix this. I'm trying to put together some instructions for you but it would first help to know how the system is seeing the FireWire drives.
From your Admin account or in root, type the following command in Terminal:
ls -alh /Volumes
then press Return.
If that command does not list your FireWire drives when used from your Admin account, try the command.
sudo ls -alh /Volumes
then press Return. Type your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
The command above should list all mounted volumes. It should give you an output similar to the following:<pre>total 24
drwxrwxrwt 11 root admin 374B May 2 05:08 .
drwxrwxr-t 35 root admin 1K May 1 15:48 ..
-rw-rw-rw- 1 drsmoke admin 6K Feb 2 05:43 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x 20 drsmoke staff 714B Dec 2 17:38 Backup Sets
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1B May 1 15:49 Macintosh HD -> /
drwxrwxrwx 17 drsmoke staff 680B May 1 15:47 Our Work
drwxrwxrwx 15 drsmoke staff 544B Mar 17 17:56 Our Work Duplicate
drwxrwxrwx 31 drsmoke staff 1K Apr 26 00:47 Spare
drwxrwxr-t 34 root admin 1K May 1 15:26 Tiger1
drwxrwxr-t 31 root admin 1K Apr 4 14:33 Tiger2
drwxrwxr-t 35 root admin 1K Apr 15 18:55 iBook</pre>Copy and paste the output into a reply here, being sure to note the following in your response:
• Specify which drives/volumes are the FireWire drives or volumes. The drive/volume names are shown in the last column in the sample output above.
• If your FireWire drives are partitioned into more than one partition per drive, please also note that.
• Likewise if any of the FireWire drives or partitions are supposed to be bootable, please also specify which ones.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

Can firewire drives in series sometimes cause system failure?

We have had problems with a 2007 iMac (23") locking up at times. We have AppleCare, and have run numerous tests to try to elucidate the problem.
After the Apple service center here could not find any problem during several days of testing, we've been doing some testing back in our office. Here's what we seemed to have discovered:
Problems SOMETIMES seem to arise when two firewire drives are connected in series to the firewire 800 port. One is a LaCie d2 Big Disk USB 2.0 & FireWire 800 , the other is an OWC Mercury Elite Firewire 800 Pro. Our normal way of running these has been with the LaCie as the outermost of the two. We discovered that we seem to be free of problems if the order is reversed and the LaCie is off, though she can also run for (at least) a while with the LaCie on, as well.
I'm theorizing that our problems may be related to one of two things:
1) Conflict between the way the two drives, and the iMac, implement the firewire 800 standard.
2) Startup problems when the firewire drives are turned on more-or-less simultaneously. One drive could be in a state where its interface is transitioning from "pass through" (drive off) stage to the "active" (drive on) state.
My question is this: Is anyone aware of any problem like this? Is it understandable that such a problem could affect the system enough to even freeze up the system?

Sure external devices can cause issues with your Mac if it's causing some kind of hardware problem with the Firewire bus-- drawing too much power, over or under voltage etc.. Some iMacs just have problems with the FW ports themselves. Sometime resetting the SMC will fix it: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1543?viewlocale=en_US
I have two FW800 drives from OWC daisy chained and I have not had any issues at all. I would try and isolate the two drives if possible to see if the problem persists. Disconnect one of the drives for a few days and use just one drive. Then switch and connect only the other drive for a few days. Then maybe try one of them on FW800 and the other on USB. The FW400 and 800 share the same bus so it may not be any differnt testing one on each if it ends up being a power issue. I wouldn't think it's a power issue though because the external drives have their own power and should not be drawing any power from the computer. But you never know
George

HELP! Firewire Drives Unmounting by themselves.

I have a small workgroup with a G4/800 server with two FireWire drives connected. One of the drives contains ALL of the organizations files and is shared over the network using the SharePoints software. The other Firewire drive is just a backup drive which is used by Retrospect. What is happening is the users will frequently find the firewire shares mounted over the network on their machines will disconnect and users will receive an alert telling them that the network volume is no longer available or something. When we go to the server we find the Firewire drives are no longer mounted on the desktop. Otherwise, the machine is running normally. Trying to remount the drives usually does not work and I have found that the only surefire way to get them back is to turn the drives off, restart the machine, then turn the drives on. After that, they will mount fine and once again become available to the clients' machines.
I am at a loss as to what would be causing these volumes to unmount or eject themselves. Can anyone help me to troubleshoot this?

External hard drive spontaneously unmounted? Try these tips:
NEW FIRMWARE: Try updating your external hard drive's firmware, which is available from your drive manufacturers Web site--or just use VersionTracker's (www.versiontracker.com) search function to find it. Be sure to back up your data before applying the update, and carefully follow the manufacturers instructions.
OUT OF iSIGHT: If you're using an iSight camera while you're using a FireWire drive, the camera may be interfering with the drive's ability to stay mounted. Try temporarily disconnecting your iSight and moving it to a separate FireWire port. If you have multiple FireWire devices, try using a FireWire hub.
POWER PROBLEM: A faulty power adapter could be causing your drive to unmount. Your drive may not be getting enough juice to stay on, causing the drive to turn off and thereby unmounting it from your Mac. Alternately, the power adapter may not be providing a steady amount of power, causing your drive to turn on and off. Try replacing the adapter. If you can't get a replacement adapter from the hard drive manufacturer, try your local electronics store. Just make sure the adapter you choose has the same connector and input/output voltage. you can find the input/output voltage on the adapter itself.
Cheers! DALE

Firewire drive question

I'm not sure whom to ask, so I though you all would have some reasonable input.
I currently have 8 firewire drives, each in an external case. What I would ideally like to see is some kind of case, that I can toss a number of the drives into, and plug into my FW800 or FW400 port and would let me turn each drive on or off so I'm not causing brownouts in my neighborhood.
Cost is bit of an issue, but my media drive collection is getting out of hand. Turning on three drives so I can get at the fourth is getting old, real quick.
Any suggestions?

What you're looking for is commonly called a RAID. There really isn't a practical reason to combine several Firewire drives into one case just to share power supplies and whatnot. Firewire drives are designed for portability and flexibility. If what you're looking for is something to combine several drives, there are some reliability and configuration issues to consider.
But bottom line, it gets a little more complicated as you add more drives.
Here's one page that shows you some options:
http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/hotswapsatakits.php

Networking Firewire Drives

I have a new MacBook Pro and Time Capsule as well as an older iMac and three firewire drives. Is there any way to network the firewire drives to the Time Capsule without having a physical connection? Any advice would be appreciated, as I am new to networking.
Here is what I have done. The MacBook Pro and TC are networked wirelessly. The firewire drives are connected to the iMac, which is connected directly to the TC. This works very nicely BUT I would like to dispose of my iMac. Is there any way I can connect the firewire drives to the wireless network without physically attaching them to the iMac or MacBook Pro?

I have a firewire HD; Acomdata, that I used as backup my emac. Then I got a Macbook, and a Time Capsule to go with it. I have the firewire drive connected to the macbook, and the macbook wirelessly to the TC. I have been transferring files over to the TC via firewire.
All of this because I don't really trust the TC which took way too much trial and error, and lots of advice to get hooked up. Even then, the backups have been very erratic. I can't use the firewire drive as an extra backup unless I allow time machine to wipe it clean first. (I'm awaiting TC updates to hopefully iron out some of these bugs, Time Capsule seems to be infested with them-ha-ha)
I don't know if that helps... but the bottom line is "Yes, my TC is connected to my firewire drive."

LaCie Ext Firewire drive issues... Strange voodoo...

So this is kind of a mystery to me... and complicated... bear with me. I am running Mac OS 10.4.4 (Tiger) and I have a Bigger Disk LaCie Firewire 400/800 d2 drive. I ran a version of Tech Tool Pro that wasn't compatible with Tiger (I know - stupid). The result was a completely unrecognizable drive to the OS. Disk Utility wouldn't even initialize it at first. I had to start up from my Panther disc and run Disk utility there and zeroed the data on the drive after recovering the data.
Now everything seemed to be peachy however, every so often, usually when I am running an application that requires the drives attention whether it be Pro Tools, iTunes, Garageband - basically any app that needs to access the drive from time to time, forces the drive to not only freeze that application, but also freezes the Finder and makes it impossible for me to restart or do anything until I literally turn the drive off. The I get the usual device removal dialogue and everything returns to normal. Force Quit does not work in this case. I literally cannot get any application affected by the drives stalling to to Force Quit until I turn the thing off.
Then when I run Disk Utility or Disk Warrior (I wont let Tech Tool do anything now) it reports that there is nothing wrong with the drive. In addition, in the Disk Utility S.M.A.R.T. status it says that is "Not Supported" when I could have sworn that before I reinitialized the disc it would always say "Verified."
In order to perhaps help the problem I have diabled Hard Disk spindown as well as turned off Spotlight for that drive. I disabled spindown because it seemed that when the drive would go to spindown that it would freeze the Finder then too.
Could it be extreme fragmentation that is causing the problem? There are no weird clicks or mechanical sounds coming from the drive. The only thing that occurs is the blue light on the drive blinks continuously - when it does that and I get the beach ball of death I know I am screwed.
So sorry for the long post but if anyone could help me with this problem I figure they would have to have the whole story.
Unfortunately I am leaning towards the dying drive theory - it would be the third drive to die on me this year alone.
Any and all help is much appreciated.
Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Hi Andrew
Firstly I don't believe the S.M.A.R.T. status will show anything other than "Not Supported" because FireWire drives are not supported - only internal drives.
Secondly your description makes me think there may be something wrong with the power supply (not exactly unheard of with LaCie drives). However I am not 100% sure - but it may still be worth checking out even if it is just to eliminate the possibility.
15" 1.25GHz/12" 1GHz PBs, 2xPPC Mac minis, 12" iBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.7) Cube, 2xTAMs, iPod 4G & nano 2G, iPs, AEBS, AX

Starting up from external partitioned firewire drive

Hi all,
I have a lacie external firewire drive. I have it partitioned. One partition has a copy of OSX. If i start up on my main drive and set the "start up disk" preferences to the OSX partition on the external drive my G5 will start up on the OSX partition.
However, if i don't set the "start up disk" preferences to the partitioned firewire drive and i try holding down the "option" key during a cold start the G5 won't recognize the partitioned OSX as an option.
I want to have this external copy of OSX as an emergency start up using the "option" key during a cold start.
For the last two years i've used a non-partitioned external firewire drive with OSX installed as an emergency start up disk and the G5 has always recognized the drive while holding down the "option" key from a cold start.
Now that i have OSX on a partitioned external drive, a cold start holding down the "option" key won't recognize the external OSX.
Any ideas?
Also, if i'm not able to start up from this partitioned firewire drive, are there any special instructions for creating a DVD copy of OSX to use as an emergenct start up disk?
Paul

Allan,
I can boot fine from the external, partitioned firewire drive if i first set my "start up disk" preferences to the external drive.
But i if have my "system startup disk" preferences set to the internal drive (as it is normally), shut the machine down, then try a cold start holding down the "option" key, the G5 won't recognize the external drive (partitioned) as an optional system from which to start up from.
In the past, i've dedicated an entire external firewire drive (NOT partitioned) as my emergency start up disk and when i did a cold start of the G5 holding down the "option" key, the G5 had no problems recognizing the external (not partitioned) drive as an optional system for start up.
I'm wondering if by partitioning the external firewire drive i have some how rendered the external drive useless as an alternate start up device.
Questions, questions ...
Paul

Firewire drives are locked in custom mode

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