My I mac won't boot, I have gone to restore but the apple hard drive next to the main hard drive says the drive is "locked" ?????? What to do?

When you chosoe the drive to install are you clicking on the Mac HD or the recovery drive?

Try using the network recovery if its avialble to you adn completely earsing the drive, do not doa time machien reastore.

Check the drive for error in disk utility and check the formats of the drives.

The drive has malfunctioned. What backups do you have?

As of 10.8.4, the volume must be unlocked first.

Here’s how the unlock procedure works for Disk Utility:

1. Boot your Mac and hold down ⌘-R (Command –R) to boot from the Recovery HD partition.
2. Open Disk Utility.
3. Select your locked hard drive.
4. Under the File menu, select Unlock “Drive Name”
5. When prompted for a password, enter the password of the authorized account on the drive.
6. Once you unlock the disk, hold down the Option key on your keyboard and click on the File menu.
7. Under the File menu, select Turn Off Encryption… with the Option key held down, it is no longer grayed-out.
8. When prompted for a password, enter the password of the authorized account on the drive.
9. Disk Utility should display a progress window labeled Starting conversion to JHFS+
10. Your drive should now be unlocked.

Help Dr. Mac

I have the same problem - locked Mac hard drive where I know the system password, but now it won't boot up. When I go to disk utility, I see my hard drive, but when I click on the drive and go to the file menu, I don't have the option that you described above - "unlock drive name." Instead, my options are new window, new, open disk image, close, get info, and unmount (name of my hard drive). In grey, and not available are the options - eject, enable journaling, change password, and turn off encryption.

How do I get to a point where I can enter the system password and get back into my computer? Any assistance you can offer would be hugely appreciated!

Hello Dr. Mac, I have the same problem but on a macbook pro 13inch. And i cannot seem to find the Unlock "Drive name" under File. Please help me out

I attempted to follow the directions to unlock the disk but am stumped at #4. "Unlock Drive Name" is greyed out... as are nearly all of the options under the "File" menu. I know the drive functions as I was using it this morning before purchasing my new MacBook Pro. I may have mistakenly erased the incorrect drive. What more can I do to unlock the drive?

I am still stuck there too.