Hard Drive Locked

Hello, I restarted from an external Fire Wire HDD. When I went to switch back to the internal HDD, the internal HDD wasn't in the Startup Disk preferences and the internal HDD icon on the desktop has a lock on it. I did a Get Info. It shows that system, admin & everyone has custom privilages. When I tried to change it: Nothing happens. I opened Terminal and this is what I got:
login: PAM Error (line 400): System error
login: Could not determine audit condition
[Process completed]
and I can't type into it or anything - - - HELPpppp !!!!!

Hey V.K. I WANT TO HAVE YOUR CHILDREN!!! You saved my life. I've been fighting with these two hard drives for about 5 hours trying to get them to unlock. One of them is my Time Machine back-up disc. So naturally it locked at exactly the same time as I'm having MAJOR problems with my boot drive and my system. All kinds of permissions are messed up. So I was running an experiment to restore my back-up to an external drive before I did it on my main system disc. In the middle it crashed and I had to do a hard reboot. When I did, my drives were locked. I've been in a state of panic ever since. Just on a lark I thought I'd check the forums before I decided to pay Carbon Computing to fix the drive. And for a change, I actually found the answer!!! Anyway, I'm breathing again and my heart is beating for the first time in hours, so THANK YOU! You are a life saver.

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Hard Drives locked after Leopard Install

Since this only happened after I installed Leopard, I figured here would be a good place. My apologies if it is not.
The root ( /Volumes/Entreri/ and /Volumes/Akira ) are now read only. All folders and files within them have correct permissions.
History: For a long time now, I've promised myself that one day, I was going to wipe my main drive, Ishii, and do OSX RIGHT. Ever since I had initial permissions problems since I upgraded my systems from OS9 to OSX, I ran my system (a Dual 1 Ghz Quicksilver G4) as root. Cringe away. I was young, and my attitude was that my dang computer was not going to tell me what I could, and could not delete (and trust me, after the initial switch and for years beyond, OSX still gave me plenty of those problems).
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Then I get info on the system drive, Ryoko, and see the same thing... and I change it, and I hit apply to all enclosed items. About 30 seconds after a little voice in my head nags: "Why would you need to do that? The drive was wiped fresh- every file in there has the permissions OSX set for it.."
But it was in process- and I've learned not to interrupt OSX doing file changes.
As I'm sure you can guess, OSX starts behaving strangely after that. I restart off the Leopard disk, and use the disk utility to Repair Disk Permissions. Due to the number of files I idiotically changed, that takes 4 hours.
Now OSX runs fine.. but my Aux drives, Entreri and Akira, have their root directories locked.
•Getting info on the hard drive makes it look like everything's fine.
•Changing the permissions from rwrwrw to rwrwrw just to try and do something doesn't do anything.
•Applying to enclosed items run, but the root directory is still locked.
•Ignoring ownership on the volume doesn't change the locked root folder.
•FileXaminer can't seem to do anything either.
•Attempting to change the permissions in the terminal results in a Operation not permitted error.
•Permissions as reported from terminal: drwxrwxrwx@ 25 root admin 918 Dec 8 14:15 Entreri
•I ran as root, to see if I could fix the problem, but it's the same thing all over.
•When booting from leopard and running disk utility, the hard drive's are still appearing as locked- nothing is wrong with the drives. I was thinking about reinstalling, but if the installer disk sees the drives as locked, I doubted that would make an issue.
Entreri: 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9
Akira: 80 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.6 (4 years old or so)
Ryoko: 80 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.6
Any help would be appreciated. I fully know I screwed up.

Same here, I have 3 extra internal drives and they now show a lock graphic on the desktop icons. If I try and write any files to the drives I get a prompt stating the drive cannot be modified. I'm given an option to Authenticate with my password, but I then get a message that says I don't have sufficient access privileges. I just updated through Software Update but didn't pay attention to what was being patched. I'm guessing a security update screwed this up. I really need my drives because I use them for media production and I have a serious deadline...come on Apple, test things out before sending updates!

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Just created additional user account. Logged out and logged back into my user account. Noticed 3 of my hard drives were locked. Went to Administrator account and they were locked also. It would not let me unlock them, Tech guy even came in and created another Root User account and it would not let him unlock them either. We have reformatted one of the drives, but these are each 2 TB drives and will take me hours to copy my files back from my Time Machine back ups

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Advice seemed to be that the best solution was to re-install OS, which for me is Lion 10.7.5 running on a iMac 24 inch, early 2009.
I followed the advice in this post:
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That seemed to all go fine, until I get to the part to reinstall the OS, and the HD is unavailble since it is locked.
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Alternatively, if I simply re-booted from the last time machine back up, would that repair the awful damage I did to my disc permissions?
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Wow, thanks. It did the trick. So now I am confused, do you think I still need to take in my Mac to see if there are some problems with the hard drive, or do you think I'm in the clear. I was going to get a new hard drive installed, because I thought that was the issue seeing as I couldn't access it during safe mode.

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Do you have FileVault turned on? Disk Utility/File/Turn off encryption.

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Hi mjfreaky, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Open Terminal & paste this in, spaces are important...
chmod 777 /Volumes/
then right after the last /, carefully type the name of that external volume, & if it has spaces in it enclose the name in quote marks.
See this User Tip by Niel:
I accidentally set a disk's permissions to No Access...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2087835

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Hi,
I have a Satellite Pro A120, which has a small hard drive 55GB, and the HDD Password Utility is used and I have to put the password in every time I start the laptop.
I have purchased a 250 Gig Sata Drive to replace it because it is too small really.
Right first I took the original drive out and attached it to my desktop computer and it wasn't even recognized, then I remembered the lock,
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How did you erase your HDD? Have you tried doing it again?
- Peter

Why are the files I migrated over from a backup hard drive locked and inaccessible on my new used Mac Book pro? I used the migration assistant. Running Snow Leopard on a core duo.

My laptop got pinched and I bought a used Mac Book Pro, put a larger hard drive in it and performed a clean install of Snow Leopard on the new drive, after which I used the Migration Assistant to bring over my applications, settings, documents, etc., from my backup hard drive. This hard drivekis not a Ti e Machine drive, it's one I use to clone my computer to regularly with Carbon Copy Cloner. When the migration was complete all my documents, the desktop,and other folders are locked and won't allow me to access them. What to do? Thanks for the help.

Graham Giles wrote:
Have you seen this type of problem before? I think it could be a serious issue for anyone in a similar position.
No; but then, I've not had occasion to use TDM. I've been using firerwire drives for over 10 years, both FW400 and FW800, with no issues except a bit of instability using a B&W G3 machine.
TDM should be safe. Using cautious, manual copying of files from the Target machine to the Host machine should not result in unexpected loss of files or damage to the Target drive's directories. It should behave exactly the same as if it were an external (to the Host) firewire drive.
• I don't suppose there is anything I can do to 'put back' lost items from a separate Time Machine drive which has an up to date backup on it.
There is probably a way to do that - seems to me that's one of the reasons for a Time Machine volume.
On the other hand, if the Time Machine volume is rigidly linked to the now-absent OS on the original drive, there may be no way to effectively access the files in the TM archive.
I know that using a cloned drive would work well in this instance.
I have no experience with Time Machine, so perhaps someone who has will chime in with suggestions.
With the machine in TDM with the other machine, have you tried running Disk Utility to see if you can effect repairs to the drive?

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I HAVE 2.4 IMAC 24" THE HARD DRIVE IS LOCKED AND I CANNOT RUN THE CD FOR REFORM AND RUN THE COMPURTER

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For reference, it's Windows 7 Home Premium edition that was on his laptop.

I would test the hard drive and memory just to be sure there is not some hardware issue causing the problem with the recovery discs.
When you first power up the notebook, use the F10 key (tapping rapidly) to enter the bios and run the diagnostics. Post back any messages or errors please.
I can help you get Windows installed without the HP discs but is a huge undertaking and should be a last resort.
Also, Please post your full product Number for me.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/findModel?cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en
#2
Please Do Not post your s/n

Inquiry- Hard drive lock

My laptop is T61 which set hard disk password on BIOS.
Recently, my graphic card was broken, lenovo technical centre (AUS) changes my main board. They had repaired my laptop for two days. When I received my laptop and tried to boot my laptop, however, my fingerprint reader cannot work anymore, because I always use fingerprint reader to access my BIOS or boot hard drive. I called to AUS lenovo centre, they told me they changed my main board so fingerprint reader cannot start in first time andthere is only way that I should input correct password then I can boot, but I have totally forgotten my hard drivepassword!
First question is that I do not know why I cannot use fingerprint reader in first time.
Second question is that if I already have forgotten my password, how can I recover my data from my hard drive or which recovery companies I can inquire?
Third question is that they say that they changed my main board; if I input correct password; does hard drive can really be accessed?
I really need someone help me.

My laptop is T61 which set hard disk password on BIOS.
Recently, my graphic card was broken, lenovo technical centre (AUS) changes my main board. They had repaired my laptop for two days. When I received my laptop and tried to boot my laptop, however, my fingerprint reader cannot work anymore, because I always use fingerprint reader to access my BIOS or boot hard drive. I called to AUS lenovo centre, they told me they changed my main board so fingerprint reader cannot start in first time andthere is only way that I should input correct password then I can boot, but I have totally forgotten my hard drivepassword!
First question is that I do not know why I cannot use fingerprint reader in first time.
Second question is that if I already have forgotten my password, how can I recover my data from my hard drive or which recovery companies I can inquire?
Third question is that they say that they changed my main board; if I input correct password; does hard drive can really be accessed?
I really need someone help me.

Hard Drive Locked

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