I can't install Mountain lion. It says my HD is locked

ok the way i fix this issue was by turning off my computer off And pressing the power bottom and option and pick recovery hd them go to disk utillidy and them i could erase my hard drive and do the installation againg

Hi,

I know this is 10 months too late, but I'm having a similar problem. My drive (startup volume) is now write-locked 😟

Your email could be my solution.

I double click on "disk utility" on the left column on that locked disk, nothing happen. I don't understand how could it work by you 10 months ago.

Can you help to explain more? Really appreciate it.

Thanks.

Cheers.

Solved! At least for me. I had the same issue using a USB external drive as my bootable Mountain Lion disk.

So when my disk appear as locked I decided to create another partition.

Done. No locked disk anymore. There's still the partition with Mountain Lion that I created first.

But it's installing as I'm writing this.

Hope this solves any question.

Cheers

Thank you so much, I was about to clean install my Mountain Lion but this fixed it and allowed me to repair my disk in boot command. A++++++ to you.

I had the Disk Locked problem after after doing all the repairs with disc utility and continued to have the problem. But a crazy solution was suggested on one of the blogs: Turn the machine off "Shutdown" and after a while boot back again and it worked... Crazy, huh!!

When my hard drive was failing, it threw up a few bad sector errors during a refresh of my clone. This was ok, Carbon Copy Cloner did not try to overwrite the original and gave a specific location (file) where the fault was. But it gets progressively worse, until one day the GPT corrupts and you lose the lot. So CCC is a good prophet of doom.

Some people may not know the Terminal command to get the Debug menu in Disk Utility. If you then select to show all disks, you can see the Recovery partitions and other reserved areas of the disks.

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1

I FIGURED OUT HOW TO FIX THIS! Mavericks royally messed up my HD and I was freaking out because I didn't have a back-up. After much research online and going back and forth from different forums here is how to fix your "damaged" HD.

So basically to save your data (if your disk is cannot be repaired in Disk Utility or you can't access it or if you keep getting stuck in the loop), you have use an external hard drive as the start up disk and install Lion or Mavericks on that then transfer your files from the HD to the external. Then shut down the computer, remove the external (so it tries to boot up on its own), go into Recovery Mode then to Disk Utility and do a level 7 erase (it will be in your security options under erase. It's the Most Secure one that the US Department of Defense uses. This will take about 12 hours and once that is done, restart your computer in Recovery Mode then reinstall Lion. To transfer your data back on your computer, plug in the external and use it as a hard drive, your data will be under the User folder and whatever username you use. TAKE THAT APPLE.

Hello Tamarason, please how do I go about installing OS X Lion on an external HDD. I am stuck with the same problem right now?

Thanks in advance.

I fixed this today.. Its a pain in the ***

This is what i did...

1. Downloaded linuxlive (its a bootable USB creator)

2. Downloaded UBUNTO Desktop (Its a LINUX operating system)

3. On my windows PC I created a bootable USB key (this took 5 mins)

4. Popped the USB key into my mac, powered up and held down the option key, also known as the alt key

5. Clicked on the EFI USB, and booted into UBUNTO

6. I ran GPARTED, erased the partion (Only erase the main one, dont touch the recovery one)

7. Restarted, but this time I booted into the MAC Recovery system

8. Went into disk utility and formatted the partion with the MAC standard one, its the default option

9. BINGO!!! I can now install OSX

No idea why my drive locked, but this sorted it! Do this at your own risk, when playing with your HDD / Partition tabels you run the risk of losing your data.

Turn off computer. Turn it on, and hold the option key. Select recovery disk, try again. Erase disk then reinstall OS X.

PLease HELP!!! Ihave the same problem, bigger! I don't know anything about it, I spent 2 hrs on the phone with the Genius and he said there is nothing to do, mu HD is locked and I will lose my files....please help me! Please!

I have been having a similar issue with a MB Air. I wasn't concerned about recovering any data so I went into disk utility, verified the disk, and then erased it. The erase took about 1 second. After that I went back into the OS Install screen and the drive was selectable. Initial prognosis looks good!

SOLVED !!

Had the same issue. What i did was this:

- Completely erase your Mac HD (obviously do a full backup first).

- Reinstall Snow Leopard.

- Download and install Lion as told in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X68cBi5gr18.

I burned the "InstallESD.dmg" to a dvd before i reinstalled Snow leopard. Once i reinstalled i installed Lion from the dvd and guess what? no more disc locked ********!!

I think the secret here is to format your HD. Hope this will help you 🙂

"...try restarting your computer while holding down the Shift key. Once restarted look for the Mountain Lion installation folder and restart the installation from there. I had a similar glitch when my install was interrupted and that seemed to solve it. It went on to a normal installation.

This recommendation was a beaut! Simple and logical - and it worked for me. Thank you!!!

Here's another option I found:

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/using-disk-utility-to-unlock-or-dec rypt-your-filevault-2-encrypted-boot-drive/

Didn't help in my case but maybe it'll help someone else