Richard, We had the same problem with the same symptoms and the same inability to make the appropriate changes - four drives were affected.
After a relatively lengthy search, we found this thread on the Apple forums: <http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1961253&start=0&tstart=0>. The third post, the one from V.K., is the one which worked for us. Make sure you do a copy and paste on the two Terminal commands he provides. Input the first command line, enter password, and then input the second command line. All of our HDs (one internal, three external) were unlocked immediately. Hopefully this procedure will work for you, too. >Hello, > I've encountered a weird issue. There are little paddlelocks on >most of my drives. I think it's a permissions issue of some sort I've >never encountered before. My boot partition on the internal drive is >fine, but the other boot partition and the user data partition won't >let me access them at all. Says I don't have enough access >priviledges. The same issue with my 800gig raid external drive too. I >can't access or modify the 'locked' drives with drive utility when >booted from an install disk either. When I do a Get Info and look at >the sharing and permissions section, all the listings there have a >'custom' indicator in the popup menu. The custom indicator won't >change to anything else using the popup menu either. This is very very >weird. The 'ignore ownership' check box is marked in the get info >window, but the orange paddlelock is also there, I had to click on it >and enter my admin password to do the tasks I listed above. > What the heck is going on? I'm locked out of all my software, data, >data archives, software archives. I tried a reinstall (the boot drive >is 'sacrificial' and the user folder is kept on the user partition. NO >Help. Quite confused here. > >Richard -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
