Locked boot disk.

[warragul]

I have a 6150/66 that hosted a Star/9 web server.
It still works. But, perhaps in a defensive move, the HD is locked.
I'm a bit out of touch with 7.5.5 these days so I can't remember if there was a simple way to lock/unlock a disk. You'd have to imagine that the Prefs folder would be unlocked, but no. Anyway, the content on the HD is from 1998, so it's well out of date.
The "Get Info" is of no use.
The System suitcase is locked and a bell is ringing in the distance, but I can't bring it to mind.
Anyone been there?

 

[AphoticD]

I have a 6150/66 that hosted a Star/9 web server.
It still works. But, perhaps in a defensive move, the HD is locked.
I'm a bit out of touch with 7.5.5 these days so I can't remember if there was a simple way to lock/unlock a disk. You'd have to imagine that the Prefs folder would be unlocked, but no. Anyway, the content on the HD is from 1998, so it's well out of date.
The "Get Info" is of no use.
The System suitcase is locked and a bell is ringing in the distance, but I can't bring it to mind.
Anyone been there?

This forum thread appears to be relevant to your situation;
https://www.macgurus.com/forums/sho...My-hard-drive-is-locked-and-I-can-t-unlock-it!

It sounds like it could be due to a damaged boot block or driver partition.


Some hunting on the old Wayback Machine reveals the Unlock tool from FWB mentioned in the above thread.

https://web.archive.org/web/20030102225647/http://www.fwb.com/dc/special/unlock.html

Problem:
After working on your hard drive with with FWB's HDT Primer, you find that the drive has become "locked" (write-protected). This prevents users from writing data to the disk. All data on the disk should remain safe and unaffected.

This problem ONLY occurs on drives originally configured with Apple's Drive Setup utility (which comes with System 7.5.2).

Solution:
Boot from a drive other than the locked drive, then unlock the drive using Drive Setup.

However, if virtual memory was on at the time of locking, neither Apple's Drive Setup software, nor FWB's software, can unlock the disk. This problem is due to changes in Apple's new driver, not supported by FWB's current version of software.

If you are not able to unlock the drive with Apple's Drive Setup, run the enclosed application to unlock any volumes that have been inadvertently locked. Then install FWB's driver on the Apple Drive to eliminate the problem from occurring in the future.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING "UNLOCK VOLUME" APPLICATION

1. Launch the enclosed patch application called "Unlock Volume". This application scans through all volumes on line looking for drives that have been inadvertently locked. The application displays a dialog prompting the user to "Unlock" each locked volume. Users should select "Unlock". Users can skip to the next volume if they wish to retain locked volumes. If any volumes were unlocked, the application allows the user to restart the Macintosh with a single button click. If no volumes were unlocked by the Application, it will simply exit back to the Finder upon completion.
2. Restart the Macintosh. All previously locked volumes that were not skipped will be unlocked.
3. Run the Primer application. Highlight the Apple drive in Primer's Drive selection window. Select "install driver" from the Driver menu (HDT/rtk) or File menu (HDT-PE). Perform this operation for all drives running the Apple driver to completely eliminate the problem. Note: Owners of Apple drives with capacities greater than or equal to 1 Gigabyte must reinitialize their drive to use the FWB driver.

NOTES
Not all System 7.5.2 users will experience this problem. There is a unique set of circumstances that must be present for the problem to occur.

• The new Apple Driver must be on installed on the hard disk.
• Hard Disk ToolKit Primer is run (but the HDT driver has not been installed on the Apple hard drive).

This problem should NOT occur under any system version prior to System 7.5.2.
FWB regrets any inconvenience this may have caused owners of the Power Mac's with PCI.

Download the .sea.hqx file and get it across to the 6150. Given that your system drive in the 6150 is locked, you'll need to have a writable drive of some kind (floppy, Zip, external SCSI HDD, etc) in order to run the Self-Extracting Archive (.sea) file. Otherwise, you could try extracting it using another PowerPC Mac (via Classic in OS X) or an emulator such as BasiliskII, Sheepshaver or QEMU on an Intel Mac.

 

[warragul]

Thank you.
That was a pretty good match for my problem and a good find.
But, alas, it wasn't a fix.
The Drive Setup wouldn't touch the locked disk because it said it was "unsupported".
So on to the FWB Unlock tool.
Although it recognised the CD in the drive, I had to get the Drive Setup from somewhere, as a locked volume it couldn't "see" my locked HD.
Still the disk is locked.
Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.

 

[AphoticD]

Was this while booted from the locked HDD? It looks like the Mac would need to boot off another volume before running the tool. Can you boot from a Mac OS Installer CD and run the Unlock tool from a floppy at the same time? Either that or boot from the System 7.5.3 Disk Tools floppy disk and have the Unlock tool on a burned CD - either way would eliminate the need to access the HDD during the process.

 

[warragul]

I booted up from an external SCSI drive. Then transferred the FWB utility across from my iMac and then ran Drive Setup without luck, then tried the FWB utility. No go, as above.
I'm running 7.5.5 on both drives. I have an 8.0 Install CD if things go bad.

Thanks,

 

[AphoticD]

Well, that was worth a try.

Perhaps an old version of DiskWarrior could rescue the drive?

According to LowEndMac, DiskWarrior 3.0.3 for OS X 10.2 - 10.4 included a copy of DiskWarrior 2.1 for classic Mac OS (7.1 through to 9.2.2).

It could be a long shot, but I have been surprised by what DiskWarrior has been able to repair in the past.

 

[warragul]

Aha!
Probably got a copy of that somewhere around here. Somewhere...

Thanks again.

 

[warragul]

Nope. That didn't do it. There was a copy of DW on one of my CDs that was for older Macs.
But there wasn't anything it could do with a locked disk.

Sorry for the absence but we had a death in our social group.
It wasn't unexpected but was still very traumatic to those close to her.

There's a vague bell, as I mentioned in the initial post, about locked system files.
I'm guessing, but does locking the System via ResEdit have the effect of locking the whole disk?
I'll try it tonight.

It's all so long ago. System 6.0.8? It hurts just to try to remember. System 7.5.5? Not much better.

 

[AphoticD]

Nope. That didn't do it. There was a copy of DW on one of my CDs that was for older Macs.
But there wasn't anything it could do with a locked disk.

Sorry for the absence but we had a death in our social group.
It wasn't unexpected but was still very traumatic to those close to her.

There's a vague bell, as I mentioned in the initial post, about locked system files.
I'm guessing, but does locking the System via ResEdit have the effect of locking the whole disk?
I'll try it tonight.

It's all so long ago. System 6.0.8? It hurts just to try to remember. System 7.5.5? Not much better.

Hi warragul, that's rough. No need to excuse your absence. Web forums and dusty old Macs should take second place to real life matters.

It's a shame DiskWarrior didn't have a go at fixing it. The lock must be installed at the SCSI driver level.

I tried the ResEdit technique to lock down the 7.5.5 System file, but it booted up and behaved normally (in BasiliskII). I was then able to uncheck "Locked" in the System file's Get Info window while it was running.

I'm wondering at this point if you can't just do a drag and drop copy of the hard drive onto your external device to copy the entire system, then use Drive Setup (or was it HD SC Setup?) to re-initialize the drive and copy the backed up files back into place.

Perhaps the SCSI drive has a physical jumper for locking the device? Maybe a little corrosion has shorted something on the controller board or jumper block? Or you simply need to place a strip of sticky tape over the Read-Only tab... wait that was something different...