What caused my hard drive to become “locked?

[bdcs64]

Recently I suddenly could not boot from my hard drive.

Mac mini, Late 2012
macOS High Sierra (10.13.4)

In disk utility, I ran first aid on the disk and in didn’t complete.

I took a photo of the summary … but missed the first few lines:

“Keys out of order
Invalid sibling link
Rebuilding catalog B-tree
The volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired.
File system check exit code is 8.
Restoring the original state found as mounted.
Problem -69842 occurred while restoring the original mount state.
File system verify or repair failed.
Operation failed…”

In Target mode I backed up my files, and that went ok.

In recovery mode (Command (⌘) – Option (⌥) – R) I tried to re-install MacOS

During the installation process at the screen instructing to Select the disk where to want to install macOS” when I clicked on my internal drive I received the message “This disk is locked” and it would not let me select it.

Back in disk utility I erased the hard drive.

I tried to re-install macOS again, and it completed ok. Currently using Migration Assistant to restore files & settings from time machine backup.

So … my question is “What caused my hard drive to become “locked?”

I t seems like something has happened to many people but I cant find an explanation of why it happens?

Was it a macOS bug?
Was my wifi & machine hacked?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Weaselboy]

So … my question is “What caused my hard drive to become “locked?”

From what you described, you have a failing hard drive and that is what caused this. I would replace it now rather than wait for it to fail completely.