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harv47 Author

Level 1

27 points

How to unlock a locked drive?

Partial output from diskutil list:

/dev/disk5

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk5

1: 0xEE 1.0 TB disk5s1

Partial terminal session:

Macintosh:~ harv$ diskutil mount /dev/disk5

Volume on disk5 failed to mount; if it has a partitioning scheme, use "diskutil mountDisk"

Macintosh:~ harv$ diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk5s1

Volume(s) mounted successfully

Macintosh:~ harv$

Disk Utility can't do anything with this disk.

Drive Genius sees the drive, but says it must

be unlocked before I can initialize it.

How do I unlock it?

Thanks,

Harv

Mac Pro (Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jul 8, 2012 5:15 PM

Best reply

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Posted on Jul 8, 2012 5:17 PM

Try:

Fix Permissions for a Locked Drive

Open Terminal in the Utilities folder. Paste the following commands at the prompt. Press RETURN after each. The first command will prompt for you to enter your admin password. It will not be echoed to the screen. After entering your password press RETURN again.

sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/*

sudo chmod a+rx /Volumes/*

killall Finder

An alternative is to download BatChmod and use it to fix the permissions.

View in context

23 replies

Jul 15, 2012 2:36 PM in response to harv47

Yep. in my case it was a left over from a linux installation of only few GBs. but it would not go away with formatting from Disk Utility. I think with terminal you get more access. not sure though. Im begining to like use of terminal commands rather than the GUI ones.

Did it work for you the same way?

Dec 29, 2014 5:55 AM in response to Kappy

Am not able to use this command , it errors out as sudo command not found , can you please help me to fix this issue ...

the drive is locked is the error which i am getting on my mac book pro..

please help me out 🙂

thanks

prasant

su_root

Level 1

0 points

Jan 14, 2015 5:40 AM in response to harv47

Hi,

### BEFORE YOU BEGIN, THIS WILL ERASE ALL YOUR DATA! YOU WILL NOT GET THIS DATA BACK! ###

For anyone who has the same issue, here a perhaps more in detail way of what to do:

1) Boot into recovery mode (option +r when you power on computer or press alt and choose recovery disk)

2) Open terminal from utilities

3) Format the volume where OS X is installed, example in my case where OS X was installed on disk02s:

# diskutil reformat /dev/disk0s2

4) Now you can erase the volume / partition with following command where OS X is in my case the name of the partition:

# diskutil eraseVolume JHFS+ OS X /dev/disks02

5) Go to disk utility, erase or format the whole disk (that is what I did anyways)

6) Go to reinstall OS X and hopefully you can select your disk as target

If not working, drop me a line @ http://christian.langfors.fi and I'll try to help & update this how-to.

Best Regards,

Christian

su_root

Level 1

0 points

Jan 14, 2015 11:28 AM in response to su_root

Sorry about the spelling errors; it should be disk0s2 and not disk02s. Also step 5) could be obsolete now when I try to recall what I did..

aysar8

Level 1

15 points

Jul 15, 2016 7:30 AM in response to Kappy

Hi, I have WD My Passport external hard drive 2 Tera Ultra.

It don't appear on finder nor on Utilities.

I guess it locked, I have use "sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/*" to see:

WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss

or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your

typing when using sudo. Type "man sudo" for more information.

To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.

Password:

I don't want to lose my data, this will delete my data? if No I proceed.

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Jul 16, 2016 7:06 AM in response to aysar8

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is a couple of years old, less people are likely to look at it. A new post would be much more visible. You can link to this one.

You won't lose any data IF you run the correct command.

aysar8

Level 1

15 points

Jul 17, 2016 2:31 AM in response to Eric Root

I have read your comment, regards.

Sep 15, 2017 9:52 AM in response to harv47

I solved this by cinnecting new usb pendrive and installing os sierra on pendrive

How to unlock a locked drive?