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My windows pc died, my files are backed up on a hard drive, but some files can't be opened on my Mac no matter what I try, can't copy them, can't edit the permissions even after unlocking the padlock on Mac. I think those files are the ones who had a Padlock on windows 10 ( Even though it created no issues there)

Anything I can do since I don't have access to windows pc right now ?

Here are the errors when trying to open, trying to change the permissions (even though I'm supposed to be able to read and write), and trying to copy the files to my Mac. Trying to Open Trying to change permission Trying to drag the file to my Mac

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  • See apple.stackexchange.com/questions/308883/…
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 13, 2021 at 12:57
  • I do not have that option.
    – stackexchanged
    Commented Jul 13, 2021 at 13:02
  • What format is the disk? Are you doing this from an Admin account on the Mac?
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 13, 2021 at 13:02
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    OK, I suspected as much - you can't ignore ownership on an NTFS disk, you have to actually change the permissions. What NTFS-capable software are you using? If you're not using 'anything' except the Mac's built-in capability you won't be able to do anything with the perms. You'll need something like Paragon NTFS for Mac, although someone else here may be able to show you how to do that for free using FUSE. [I've never done that myself, I use Paragon]. Once you have one of those running, you'll be able to write to the disk & change permissions.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 13, 2021 at 14:59
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    You need to change the perms on the disk - to do that you need to be able to write to it. macOS by default can read NTFS but can't write.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 13, 2021 at 15:27

2 Answers 2

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Install Windows 10 in a virtual machine on your Mac. Oracle Virtual Box is a free product and VMware Fusion Player does offers free licenses. Windows 10 can be downloaded, installed and used for free without a product key for short periods of time. Certainly, long enough to copy the needed files or change permissions. Afterwards, you can delete the virtual machine to regain used space. Both Virtual Box and Fusion Player require very little space so there is no advantage to removing either software application.

You may avoid using a virtual machine by just booting your Mac from a Windows 10 installer flash drive or DVD. This may require the Windows Support Software to be installed on the same or different flash drive. Once booted, you can open a Command Prompt window. If you are familiar with Windows commands, you could copy the files to another FAT, ExFAT or NTFS volume. Or, change the permissions.

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    The padlock on Windows means that they're encrypted with EFS. If this is the case (as they hint in the question) then the OP would need the encryption key they hopefully backed up as well as a Windows VM. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encrypting_File_System
    – lx07
    Commented Jul 13, 2021 at 19:03
  • How can I have the encryption key when I never encrypted them in the first place ? The padlock happened on its own, I think from transferring from one half of the Hard drive to the other, from C to D and vice versa. But Padlocked files uploaded to let's say google photos, when I still have had ,y pc, could be read in google photos with no issues.
    – stackexchanged
    Commented Jul 13, 2021 at 21:27
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It's probably a permission error. Try putting chmod 644 /path/to/file" in terminal and see if it fixes up the perms. If that doesn't work try chmod 666 /path/to/file. If that doesn't work, it's probably something else. However, to change the perms the disk needs to be writable, meaning you need ntfs-3g to mount the NTFS disk as writable

NTFS-3G: https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/wiki/NTFS-3G

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