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The 2013 revamp of the desktop Mac series known as the Mac Pro.

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Mac Pro 6 Firmware Password

I bought a Mac Book Pro 6 from a liquidation auction sale. All was working fine until I went to add a drive to it to use as a backup. The Mac keeps disconnecting the drive so I can’t copy anything to or from a USB storage device. The USB ports work as I have a mouse and keyboard plugged in. On contacting the company their sales conditions were sold as seen so they couldn’t help, even though I have a receipt of sale. I have read that there may be a firmware password enabled, but I can’t find anything on the Mac to disable it. How can I check if there is a password and is there a way I can reset the password, or if I can’t is there a work around where I can attach a drive to use as a Time Machine back up device?

Thank you.

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A firmware password wouldn’t be your issue if you are able to boot up to the systems desktop.

Sounds like you have a power or USB port issue or the company might have applied a rule to the active Users ID so the ports are disabled. Open up the System Preferences at the bottom locate the Users & Groups control panel what does the Current User have of system privileges? Admin or Standard.

Review the log files as well for a clue and lastly run the onboard diagnostics using the startup D key

Reference: Mac startup key combinations

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Hi Dan,

I deleted all the previous accounts on the Mac and created my own as Admin. I upgraded the OS to Monterey and downloaded the software I have on my apple account with no problem and the apps from my Adobe CC account. It was when I plugged in my hard drive to copy photo's etc. I ran into problems. I thought it was a drive error, so I used another drive that I was going to use with Time Machine. The drives appear and the files are viewable but as soon as I try to copy anything to or from the drive it disconnects, then reconnects again stopping the transfer. It's when I googled this it was suggested that a firmware password was enabled somewhere. I know about the BIOS setup in PC's but I am fairly new to Macs so I don't know where to look to check this, and if there was a password then how do I disable it. I know I used to do it on my old IBM PS2 by shorting the pins on the speaker, but I haven't a clue about the innards of a Mac. There is no password prompt anywhere except the usual OSX one.

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Hi again Dan, I have tried the startup diagnostics and I now have a password prompt on a black screen. I recognise this as the firmware password prompt I found on google. I was never told there was a password for this, the only password I got with the Mac was the OSX password which I have since changed when setting up my own account and deleting the old legacy accounts. Is there a technical procedure to disable this so I can hopefully attach an external drive.

Apparently, according to google, Apple are no use unless I bought the Mac from them, is this true, even though I have a legitimate receipt of sale.

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Still don't think you have a firmware password as you wouldn't have gotten that far Set a firmware password on your Mac

"When you set a firmware password, users who don't have the password can't start up from any disk other than the designated startup disk." As long as you aren't booting up from the external you should still be able to access other drives.

Lets give this a try: How to enable the root user on your Mac or change your root password

The last solution is to use the Ethernet Connection connecting to your other system (back to back connection which haves the HD connected.

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Daniel crwdns2934231:0crwdne2934231:0
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