Finding Locked Files on your Drives

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Level 1

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Finding Locked Files on your Drives

When transferring a large number of files to my Mac from an old hard drive it apparently left several Random files locked on my system. I know how to get rid of them if locked.. but how do I scan my drive to find all of the locked files it left?

Everytime I seem to be encountering one it is crashing my application.

Thanks,

Christopher

Mac Pro Quad 2.8 - Jan 08 Rev, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 10 Gigs of Ram, ATI Radeon 2600 XT

Posted on Aug 15, 2008 7:28 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Niel

Level 10

731,981 points

Aug 15, 2008 7:38 PM in response to crsouser

Open the Terminal in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder and run:

sudo find . -flags uchg

Provide your administrator password, which won't appear on the screen while it is being typed; the command may take a few minutes. Do not unlock the BootX or boot.efi items.

(34796)

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Answer 2

crsouser Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 16, 2008 5:31 AM in response to Niel

Again *I know how to fix it*.. but +I am looking for an easier method of locating the locked files+ than manually scrolling through a couple hundred directories and 40,000 files looking for a little lock on the file.

If there is even one it seems to be able to crash my programs that I use on the files.

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Answer 3

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Aug 16, 2008 7:01 AM in response to crsouser

Niel's method doesn't unlock those files, it only finds them. seems to me that's exactly what you are asking for.

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Answer 4

crsouser Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 17, 2008 8:07 PM in response to crsouser

Sorry.. you are correct.. I misread it as someone stating the Apple knowledge base answer of how to unlock them.

The method suggested worked (just cd up to a top level directory first".
sudo find . -flags uch.

Just so all the info's in one place:
"I.e." sudo chflags -R nouchg for unlocking them.
from
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1402

I found the Option button plus empty trash works too for getting locked files out of there sometimes

As well as Get Info followed by unchecking "Locked".

Christopher

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