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TMcJilton Author

Level 1

10 points

External HDD Unlock

Hello,

I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion and upon performing a clean install, I decided it was a good idea to start fresh with my external HDD which I use for Time Machine. After backing up my files from the external HDD, I used Disk Utility to perform an erase. However this drive, whcih was "encrypted", had some kind of an error while erasing and now I cannot seem to unlock the drive.

When I connect the drive it does not show up in Finder. When I open Disk Utility, the drive shows up, but will not allow me to make any changes. All of the tabs are gone except for first aid and partition, and it will not allow me to create a partition on the drive. It says "The partition contains a locked disk and can not be resized until it is unlocked".

Help!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Jul 31, 2012 1:25 PM

Top-ranking reply

TMcJilton Author

Level 1

10 points

Posted on Aug 2, 2012 12:53 PM

So I have fixed the issue and wanted to share my method, and results. I had access to another machine, and uesd a third party disk utility program to delete the partition and start fresh. If I had known my drive had a USB port as well as the Fire Wire that I use for my Mac, I would have simply done this from the beginning. In any case, it seems that for whatever reason OS X's Disk Utility didnt have the capability of simply deleting the partition.

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44 replies

Sunzi

Level 1

0 points

Jan 3, 2013 3:30 AM in response to Eddie Yam

First off Eddie, Thank you very much for your posts. I have a 2011 Imac with a 256 SSD and a 2 TB HDD. While fooling around with boot camp and various other partions I made the mistake of not decrypting my HDD. I really made a mess of my HDD and couldn't partion it back to the way I had it.

I can confirm the terminal commands given by Eddie do infact work on a second internal drive as well. Thanks to these terminal commands and Time machine my Imac is back to the way it was.🙂

sharik14

Level 1

0 points

Mar 14, 2014 9:19 AM in response to bill.mcd

Just in case anyone has the same question as bill.mcd --- from Recovery Mode's main screen (where you selected Disk Utility), you can go to the Utilities menu and select Terminal.

If you're already in Disk Utility, quit out of that, and it'll take you back to the main screen -- then select Utils > Terminal.

alanmgao

Level 1

0 points

Jul 26, 2014 9:02 PM in response to Tubby007

Hi Tubby007, I have the same problem. I had a clean installation of OS X. After that, my seagate external HD (was encrypted) got messed up and I cannot do anything about it from disk utility UI tool. And I saw this message "his patition contain a locked disk and can not be resized until it is unlocked" in Disk Utility." However all my backup files on the seagate external HD. Were you able to fix the external HD AND recover all the files on it? Many thanks!

Jan 19, 2015 5:24 AM in response to Eddie Yam

It's over three years since you answered this query......but I've had a similar problem, I followed your instructions and HEY PRESTO! my Formac external drive re-appeared on my desktop.

So many thanks, Eddie, for your expertise.

Wander65

Level 1

8 points

Oct 17, 2017 6:48 PM in response to Eddie Yam

I have the same issue but if possible I'd like to recover the data on the drive. Is there any way to do that with your method? here is what I get when inputing the first command.

labeck

Level 1

19 points

Nov 20, 2013 2:06 PM in response to TMcJilton

I've tried the suggestions here, but it snot working for me. However, I think my issue is different. Can someone take a look?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5583730

wesfina

Level 1

0 points

Aug 1, 2012 1:56 PM in response to GeertN

I'm having this exact problem. All options are grayed out in disk utility

TMcJilton Author

Level 1

10 points

Aug 1, 2012 2:15 PM in response to GeertN

I have actually tried this. I booted the recovery disk, and used disk utility from there but it is still locked.

DmncnGy

Level 1

0 points

Aug 3, 2012 8:50 PM in response to Eddie Yam

This solution is a much better approach than grabbing the disk and using a partition tool on another machine. Thank you, worked for me. (This is for the solution Eddie Yam posted.)

Aug 4, 2012 10:23 PM in response to Eddie Yam

Eddie's solution worked for me too. Took me about an hour to find this thread, and 2 minutes to regain access to my HD. Thanks!

Aug 6, 2012 10:48 PM in response to Eddie Yam

Thank you Eddie, that helped. Also, I was using the wrong command, I had to type in "diskutil corestorage delete 6B885E57-6D7E-4CB6-B2AA-507DD9A58BE2" Thank you very much for your quick reply.