Im not sure how this happened but, while I was changing disk permissions, I was locked out of both of my USB external hard drives.
Now both drives show up on the desktop w/ the locked symbol on the bottom left hand corner of the disk icon. I am now unable to open either drive.
So far Ive tried the following:
1. Tried to run disk utility. Now the verify and repair disk permission buttons are shaded out and unavailable. It allows me to repair both disks but nothing changes.
2. Highlighted the drives and tried Get Info. The sharing and permissions window show my user name, staff, and everyone as custom privilege. I can unlock the disk icon at the bottom of the window and try to change the settings of all 3. It changes while clicking on read and write but then immediately reverts to custom. Choosing ignore ownership does not help. (When this first happened, I did not choose the custom setting while changing disk permissions)
3. I have booted from a flash drive boot stick w/ a minimal system on it. I repeated the above with the same results.
4. I change user to root access. Again, got the same results although I can open the drives to the directory but not make any changes to the drive or remove the locks.
5. I have booted the drives on my other machine -- an older iMac-- but the drives are still locked and with same results as above.
6. I have ran DiskWarrior over both drives while booted from the boot stick. DiskWarrior says the drives are OK after running repair.
I am now unable to back up may iMac and have lost access many valuable and irreplaceable files on the external drives.
Machine specs follow. Thank you in advance for your help!
BNEX
My Mac:
OSX 10.6.8
Model Name: MacMini
Model Identifier: Macmini4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MM41.0042.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.65f2
Now both drives show up on the desktop w/ the locked symbol on the bottom left hand corner of the disk icon. I am now unable to open either drive.
So far Ive tried the following:
1. Tried to run disk utility. Now the verify and repair disk permission buttons are shaded out and unavailable. It allows me to repair both disks but nothing changes.
2. Highlighted the drives and tried Get Info. The sharing and permissions window show my user name, staff, and everyone as custom privilege. I can unlock the disk icon at the bottom of the window and try to change the settings of all 3. It changes while clicking on read and write but then immediately reverts to custom. Choosing ignore ownership does not help. (When this first happened, I did not choose the custom setting while changing disk permissions)
3. I have booted from a flash drive boot stick w/ a minimal system on it. I repeated the above with the same results.
4. I change user to root access. Again, got the same results although I can open the drives to the directory but not make any changes to the drive or remove the locks.
5. I have booted the drives on my other machine -- an older iMac-- but the drives are still locked and with same results as above.
6. I have ran DiskWarrior over both drives while booted from the boot stick. DiskWarrior says the drives are OK after running repair.
I am now unable to back up may iMac and have lost access many valuable and irreplaceable files on the external drives.
Machine specs follow. Thank you in advance for your help!
BNEX
My Mac:
OSX 10.6.8
Model Name: MacMini
Model Identifier: Macmini4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MM41.0042.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.65f2
