Some months ago, the Mac mini died. I kept the SSD, and put it in an external enclosure.

The SSD is for apple ID A, mine. I have a Macbook Pro, with apple ID B, my wife's. Plugging the SSD into her MBP, I can see the content hierarchy on the SSD, but the contents under my name are locked. This is of course what you would want, but it is not helpful at all.

Please tell this tired old man how to unlock the files on the SSD so I can do my taxes.

I would first try CMD + I on that drive and then uncheck the box that refers to drive lock.

The only quick fix that I can think of is to use the migration utility. That would allow you to migrate the user data from the old drive to a new one, of course you will need to know the passwords. If you used FileVault you need that too.

Good luck.

Maybe the quickest way would be to go to system preferences and select the external SSD as the startup disk. Reboot and log in using the user name from the mini, and copy the files to another location.

Was the SSD encrypted using fileVault? If not, you should be able to change the permissions using a Terminal window and sudo.

You can also hold down the option key on startup allowing you to select a startup disc.

But I wonder... would creating a new user on the laptop with his log on from the SSD allow access???

When my Mac died last year, crushed in a taxi in Europe, I got a macbook air (what I'm on right now). Love it. I needed everything off the other hard drive, however, and put it in an external case. I simply hooked up to it and took what I needed. I don't recall needing an apple ID for anything.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
When my Mac died last year, crushed in a taxi in Europe, I got a macbook air (what I'm on right now). Love it. I needed everything off the other hard drive, however, and put it in an external case. I simply hooked up to it and took what I needed. I don't recall needing an apple ID for anything.

Yes of corse... but he's trying to access it while logged in with his wife's ID, so just kind of like any stranger trying to access his drive...

are you simply trying to get access to the files themselves?
Easiest way in my opinion is to change the permissions on them via command line.

Open up terminal (hold command and hit spacebar - then type "terminal" and hit enter).
It'll drop you into a command prompt.
Figure out what directory your files are at and CD there.

Example:
I have a NAS drive attached to my mac mini right now.
I can use the "df" command and find out where it's mounted up locally:


Mini:~ wingnut$ df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Available Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on
/dev/disk1s1 489620264 303753368 176119808 64% 548310 9223372036854227497 0% /
devfs 370 370 0 100% 640 0 100% /dev
/dev/disk1s4 489620264 8388648 176119808 5% 3 9223372036854775804 0% /private/var/vm
map -hosts 0 0 0 100% 0 0 100% /net
map auto_home 0 0 0 100% 0 0 100% /home
x.x.x.x:/volume3/mydir 2013265920 11685232 2001580688 1% 0 0 100% /Users/wingnut/mydir <-------- this is where my NAS is located
/dev/disk1s3 489620264 1001504 176119808 1% 23 9223372036854775784 0% /Volumes/Recovery
Mini:~ wingnut$

So then I would "cd" into that directory:

Mini:~ wingnut$ cd /Users/wingnut/mydir/
Mini:mydir wingnut$

You can then do an "ls -l" (that's lowercase LS -L) to view the contents of the directory.
You can then change the permissions on the files via:

chmod 777 *

That command is pretty nuclear - it sets the file permissions to EVERY file in that directory to full access for everyone.

Note: you might need to use the "sudo" command pre-pended onto those commands in order to accomplish everything.
example:

sudo chmod 777 *

OK, I did a little digging, and I think this is the best solution. You can log on as the root user. I had this exact same problem years ago, but I fixed it in Terminal using "sudo chmod" as creslin explains above. If you perhaps don't want to work at the command line, you can simply enable the root user to get at the files. The root user is God of the system and can access anything on the computer. Here is the support doc from Apple:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204012

Here's the short of it.

Log on using the Admin account.
Go to System Preferences > Users and Groups.
Unlock the lock to make changes.
Go to Login Options.
There's a "Join" button beside "Network Account Server:" Click it.
Click the button "Open Directory Utility"
Unlock the lock to make changes, same as before.
Once Directory Utility is unlocked, click on "Edit" in the Menu up at the top of the screen. It's not located anywhere in the Directory Utility window, but up in the menu at the top of your screen.
Click on "Enable Root User".
Set a password for the root user.
Now log out, and log back in as the root. You'll see your user accounts during login, but click on "Other" and enter "root" for the user name. Enter the password you just created.
It will be a new account, so Apple will ask for your iCloud credentials as if it's a new computer. Just cancel through the setup until you get to the desktop. Get your files from your external drive, copy them elsewhere, reset their permissions, or whatever.

When you are all done, reverse the process to disable the root account. It's not a good thing to leave the root user enabled long term. While you are logged in, you can do anything to the computer, including screw it up. All safeguards are off because the root user is a "superuser" in Unix parlance.

I just did this as I was typing it out. Very easy. Hope this works for you.

Complete computer novice here, I use an iPad..can the files somehow get moved to the iCloud and then retrieved by another computer from there?

quote:

Originally posted by cparktd:

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
When my Mac died last year, crushed in a taxi in Europe, I got a macbook air (what I'm on right now). Love it. I needed everything off the other hard drive, however, and put it in an external case. I simply hooked up to it and took what I needed. I don't recall needing an apple ID for anything.

Yes of corse... but he's trying to access it while logged in with his wife's ID, so just kind of like any stranger trying to access his drive...

Beats me. You lost me already.

I was using a new computer, no ID. I don't. understand why it would make any difference, but i'm not a computer guy.

quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:
but the contents under my name are locked.
...
Please tell this tired old man how to unlock the files on the SSD so I can do my taxes.

In a terminal window:
 

chflags -R nouchg /PATH/TO/DIRECTORY/WITH/LOCKED/FILES/

This is a recursive command, so you would point to the top level directory of the files you want unlocked.

Thank you one and all. I will try this after I have enjoyed one Sam Adams later today.