Repairing Disk Permissions for internal drive.

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Level 1

9 points

Repairing Disk Permissions for internal drive.

hello,

I recently installed Big Sur on an internal SSD (2014 Mac Mini) and it is now startup disk. However, since then, I have not been able to save any files to the original Mac HD. It is now read only and running Disk Utility to try and repair the permissions fails. Also, each time I log into the machine another window pops up asking for a password of the old start up drive. However, it no longer takes the old password, only the one that I've set for the new drive. Also, any attempt to change the permissions from the sharing and permissions window gives me an error message stating that I "don't have the necessary permissions." I've thought about buying disk warrior, but I don't think that it supports Big Sur.

Thanks,

K

Posted on Sep 4, 2021 2:05 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

60,488 points

Sep 4, 2021 5:48 PM in response to Kyatta

@samtenor is partially correct. You will need to erase the whole physical drive since you likely had a Fusion Drive setup (even if you only had the hard drive originally this step will still be necessary). However, you may also first need to delete the one of the two APFS volumes on the hard drive so that it triggers a pop-up notice asking about deleting the "Volume Group" which you may first need to do before Disk Utility will allow you to erase the whole physical hard drive. Also you may even need to click "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drives appear on the left pane of Disk Utility. Then erase the whole physical hard drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled). Apple really makes this complicated these days.

FYI, before going to all this trouble you may want to check the health of the hard drive to make sure the hard drive is not worn out or failing. You can use DriveDx to check the health of the hard drive. If you see any "Warning" or "Failing" notices, then it means the hard drive should be replaced because it is worn out or failing respectively. Sometimes you can still use a "worn out" hard drive as long as the "Load Cycle Count" attribute does not have a "Worst" value of 001. You can always post the complete DriveDx report here for analysis.

Just make sure to pull any data from the hard drive before you erase the hard drive.

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Answer 2

samtenor

Level 4

1,786 points

Sep 4, 2021 4:19 PM in response to Kyatta

I believe since Catalina 10.15 - MacOS put 2 volumes - one is xxxx HD and the other is xxxx HD - Data.

Your Mac HD volume is the one been secured (can not be modified) by MacOS, and Mac HD - Data will be the volume you should use.

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Answer 3

Kyatta Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 5, 2021 8:32 AM in response to HWTech

I neglected to mention above that the original drive is still running Catalina, while the new SSD was upgraded to Big Sur. I booted up from Catalina drive and used disk utility without any errors. I then downloaded Big Sur and got to about 15 minutes remaining into the installation and then it quit due to a permissions issue. Could the different OS on the two drives be the issue? I'll download DriveDX after I return home. Thanks for the responses.

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Answer 4

Sep 6, 2021 9:34 AM in response to Kyatta

The passwords question has become a nightmare after High Sierra, due to the many secutiry issues all around. As suggested, re-inirialize your machine using the procedure suggested by Apple as per machine type. But please note: more password inputs are requsted in latest versions of Mac OS.

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