# My hard drive is locked?



## Matsaki (Sep 30, 2011)

I have some problems with my hard drive in my Macbook Pro with Mac OS X Lion. Now I have tried to erase the hard drive to use Time Machine.

But I can do nothing with the hard drive. Erasing fails and if I try to install Lion again it says that the hard drive is locked. I even tried to use OS X 10.6 startup disk and erase from there. But no luck there either.

What's going on with Lion and locked hard drives?


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## oldmanmac (Sep 30, 2011)

Go to the finder click, on your hard drive icon and click info,see if you have read write permissions enabled for your log in.


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## Matsaki (Sep 30, 2011)

I can't do that as I can't boot from the hard drive. I can only see it from Disk Utility startup disc.


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## oldmanmac (Sep 30, 2011)

If you can start your MBP using target disk mode see if the drive is visible  If it can't be seen,looks like the drive could be on the way out.


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## Matsaki (Sep 30, 2011)

The drive can be seen from Disk Utilities that I use when starting up from the install DVD/USB.


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## oldmanmac (Sep 30, 2011)

Since you have a TM backup at this point I would erase the disk on the MBP and reinstall  your OS from the proper install disk. Or you might use your disk utilities to repair permissions on the MBP drive and see if that works.


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## Satcomer (Sep 30, 2011)

Try preforming an fsck (using the steps in the Apple document Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck) and see if the internal drive needs fixing.  

Also consider getting a new drive as your internal might be going. Better to be safe than sorry.


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