how to unlock a FW external hard drive (la cie) in terminal window

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Level 1

25 points

how to unlock a FW external hard drive (la cie) in terminal window

HI,

I have a FW external La cie drive that today decided to lock itself and even though i have tried to unlock and repair privileges and reboot and change ownership and permissions, still cant get in.
There must be a way in terminal window to unlock the external drive to allow me to access as it has ALL my itunes and iphotos files on.

HOwever i have a seperate 'copy' of my iphotos so second question is how can i place that folder somewhere to enable iphotos to actually open therefore seeing all my photos.

If any one can help i would really appreciate it.

thank you

Kris

imac, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jul 15, 2009 12:13 PM

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Answer 1

babowa

Level 9

78,103 points

Jul 15, 2009 1:33 PM in response to Kris Watson

This may be a shot in the dark (and the only thing I came up with):

If your external's icon shows up on your desktop, highlight it and hit Command/i (get info). In the resulting window, scroll down to "ownership and permissions". Check to see if it says "read & write" - if it does not, click on the lock, enter your administrator password, and change it to "read & write". Close window. You may (or may not) need to restart Mac - in either case, see if you can now access it.

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Answer 2

Kris Watson Author

Level 1

25 points

Jul 15, 2009 2:46 PM in response to babowa

thanks for your reply, yes ive tried that im afraid, i click on the lock and enter password but then when i try to change the ownerships from 'custom' to anything else it doesnt change.!!! so i am sure there is a way of using the terminal window and entering some code that will unlock it and give me access to the files, once ive dragged them off i can format it and start again, i just need access to them!!!
thanks for your email anyway.

Kris

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Answer 3

den.thed

Level 9

77,146 points

Jul 15, 2009 4:42 PM in response to Kris Watson

Hi Kris

Go to Applications > Utilities and open Disk Utility, then highlight the External Hard Drives icon in the left side list and click the Repair Disk button.

Dennis

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Answer 4

Kris Watson Author

Level 1

25 points

Jul 15, 2009 11:46 PM in response to den.thed

HI Dennis,

yep ive done that too, several times, but the lock is still there.

thanks for the suggestion though.

cheers

Kris

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Answer 5

Aug 6, 2009 1:15 AM in response to Kris Watson

Just a few easy steps.

1. Right click (or Control-click) on the desktop icon of the drive you wish to unlock.
2. Select Get Info.
3. Unlock the locked icon at lower right of Info.
4. Enter your system password.
5. Open a Terminal window Applictions > Utilities > Terminal
6. Enter the following:
sudo chflags -R nouchg "/Volumes/[Drive Name]" , leave the quotation marks in.
7. Press Return.
8. Enter password in terminal and press return. If Successful, the terminal will not report a result, but the lock should be gone. If not successful, make sure you have the drive name spelled correctly (it needs to be EXACT, include leading or trailing spaces.
9. Don't forget to go back to the Drive Info dialog in Step 1 and give yourself read and write permissions!

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