UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Here's the story:

I had an LaCie Internet Space (1TB)... Recently the network (or software)
functions of the device just died... I tried to access it via different routers,
checking UTP, tried everything possible to rule out physical damage to
components.

Then i got the disk out of its housing and noticed it was still working properly!
Then i got it hooked up to my computer directly and to my suprise: it got
recognized directly (in Mac OS X), but i wasn't able to access the files due
to the fact this was a linux filesystem (Ext3).

I decided to install Ubuntu in VMWare and indeed: the hdd was accessible and
the brunt of my data (720GB) could be accessed directly! BUT: the really
important files were located on the users personal folders... Now these seem
to be locked-out and i have no way of getting in to these folders...

Is there any way were i can "delete" these restrictions to gain access to my
(and the others) data again?

Greetz
SentinelX

Depends how they were "locked out". If it's just file permissions, you should be able to access anything as root. They may also be on a totally different partition. If it's anything else, you'll have to tell us what's going on, we can't see your computer from here.

thnx for the fast reply anyways...

Together with someone i know we have already solved the problem!
The fact i needed root privileges to change the permissions was something
i didn't know I now changed the permissions to be rwx for everyone and
my data is available again!

Greetz
SentinelX