How To: Unlock a Locked Volume

After reinstalling 10.6 on one of my MacBooks, I found that I was locked out of one of my volumes on a USB drive. After some quick googling, I found that there were quite a few others that have had this same exact problem. Here's a quick fix that solved my problem.


Type ls -alO /Volumes

Check to see i f the results show that you have the "uchg" flag set on any of the locked volumes.

If so, type sudo chflags nouchg /Volumes/VolumeName and replace "VolumeName" with the name of your volume.  Remember, if you have spaces in your volume name, include quotes around it.