How To Unlock External Hard Drive On Mac OS

Using an external hard drive is a good choice for every computer user. External hard drive enables you to have more flexibility in taking, saving, or transferring all the data you want. Now, what if you need access to the hard drive but you find it locked? How to unlock the hard drive?

Regardless of the operating system, you prefer to use, the external hard drive gives you options and ease whether it is to transfer or backup data. At this time, we are going to focus on the Mac operating system. I would like to share how to unlock hard drive on Mac operating system.

Some of you may be confused about why a hard drive is locked in MAC. Well, this can mean several causes. One example of the common reason why a hard drive is locked on MAC is that the hard drive only supports a certain file system in which detected as a “read-only” file in the MAC operating system.

Another possibility is that the hard drive is set to “read-only” mode. If it is so, you will not able to delete or even copy the file into the hard drive from your MAC. Something which causes a headache when we do not know it yet.

Another possibility is that the hard drive is encrypted so that you will need to decrypt it to have access to the external hard drive through your MAC operating system computer.

Unlocking Hard Drive on MAC Operating System

When you need to copy data into or from your external hard drive, of course, you will need the authority to access it into the hard drive. Thus, it is impossible to do it when the hard drive is in locked mode. Therefore you will have to unlock the hard drive on your MAC before you can use it as you desire to.

To unlock hard drive on MAC operating system, please follow below steps for more detail:

1. Go to the hard drive icon and right-click on it (or hold).
2. Next, find the “Get Info” option.
3. Scroll down and find the “Sharing and Permission“.
4. Click the Lock option (you may have to enter the password here).

Reaching this point, you have the simplest option to unlock hard drive on MAC. To grant permission to access the hard drive simply check the “Ignore the ownership on this volume” option. This grants you access to the hard drive regardless of whoever created it before. (Please see below screenshot for more detail)

In another case, if you need to decrypt a hard drive on MAC, there also a simple way to do it. Please follow the below steps:

1. Go to the drive icon, right-click.
2. When the pop-up menu comes up, select the “Decrypt (Hard Drive Name)”.

**Note: this will require a password, that is way will only work if you know the password of the hard drive.

Lock Hard Drive on MAC

After knowing how to unlock hard drive on MAC, I believe some of you are curious about how to lock the hard drive on MAC. Similarly to how to unlock hard drive on MAC, there are also some simple ways to lock hard drive on MAC.

1. The first option is to set the hard drive to be read-only. To set so, right-click on the hard drive name and find the “Get Info” and select it. After the “Ignore ownership on this volume” will appear, uncheck it.
2. The next step is to set the “Sharing & Permission” section. This section will let you grant or forbid access only for certain user categories or whatever you want. To set it, please change the “Read & Write” to “Read Only” or any other option you want the specified user permission. Please see the below screenshot for more detail.

   

   3. What if you want to encrypt the hard drive on your MAC operating system? As simple as how to decrypt the hard drive, this is how you should do to encrypt the hard drive on MAC. Simply point your cursor to the hard drive name – Right-click (you will see several pop up options here)-Select the “Encrypt (Hard drive name)”. After that, you will need to enter a password for more security reasons. The below screenshot will help you see the pop-up menu.

Conclusion

This is how you should do to Unlock hard drive on MAC OS and also when you need to lock hard drive on MAC. By knowing this, you will have more flexibility in using a hard drive on MAC operating system. Usually, people need to unlock hard drive on Mac because they need to for the external hard drive on MAC operating system. This is because to perform the formatting, the user needs to have access to the external hard drive. Usually, formatting hard drives are done to free up space on the hard drive itself.

Please feel free to share your experience if you have anything to add regarding how to unlock the external hard drive on MAC or how to lock it.