Locked External Hard Drive Problems!

[Richy23]

Hello and thanks for looking at this thread for me!

Basically I have a 1TB Samsung external hard drive that I've had since last year, and everything has been fine with it, until about one week ago.

The hard drive is roughly half full (500GB) of data etc.

When I connect it to my Macbook Pro it comes up with some message (Can't remember exactly what, but something along the lines of it can't read it) and then also does the following...

• When I enter iPhoto (my library is on it!) it says it cannot read the drive as it is 'locked'...
• If I try and verify in disk utility it says 'Live file system repair is not supported'..
• I cannot change permissions as it's 'read only' in Get Info..

Any ideas? It's formatted as FAT32, if that makes any difference?

Thank you for ANY help!

 

[Richy23]

Anyone have any vague ideas?

 

[Fishrrman]

I have some thoughts, though they may not help you now.

It's not such a good idea to store important Mac stuff on a drive formatted for "something else" (such as Fat 32).

You are finding out why, right now.

In the future, keep your important Mac files on a Mac-formatted (HFS+ with journaling enabled) drive.

If you need "cross platform PC compatibility", keep ANOTHER drive around, even a high-capacity flashdrive, for moving things back and forth.

But again, keep Mac files on a Mac-formatted drive.

Insofar as your present problems are concerned, do you have another Mac, or a PC, that you could connect the drive to?

 

[Richy23]

I could connect it to my girlfriends PC - should I try that?

Thank you for the advice!