Extrenal drive refused in preferences

[Airedale Studio]

Lightroom CC wont let me use my external drives. I keep gettin this error: " Oops! You've selected an invalid location. Make sure you select a valid destination for your photos (such as an external hard drive, USB drive, etc). Choose a different location." Any one can help me with this?

MacBook Pro, OS High Siera 10.13.2

Cheers

Paul

[Jim Wilde]

What type of external drive are you trying to use? LRCC will not allow you to select a networked drive, but "standard" external drives should be OK.

[Airedale Studio]

I,m using a Seagate 1 TB. How do I change the format? I can't find data on how to.

[Jao vdL]

Can you select the drive in Finder and do a get info? In the Format section it should say: Mac OS Extended or APFS. Most external drives even if they are marketed as compatible with Macs come formatted for windows computers by default - typically FAT or exFAT but you sometimes will see NTFS. Mac OS X will still read those and should be able to write to them (except for NTFS), but perhaps Lightroom CC really wants it to be Mac OS format. Changing the format takes a full erase of the disk and is done through Disk Utility. You would need to back up any file on the disk before reformatting it so you typically do this right when you first connect a new hard disk to a Mac.

[Jao vdL]

Oh and if it is Mac OS Extended you should check whether you have the correct permissions on the drive (also in get info at the bottom). You should have write permissions throughout the drive.

[Airedale Studio]

Ok thanks.

Mine says NTFS so I,ve got to change it.

When I reformat does it give me options of file systems?

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

That's definitely the reason then. Mac OS X cannot natively write to NTFS without third-party software. It will give you options when you erase. See here: Disk Utility for macOS Sierra: Erase a volume using Disk Utility

Generally you want to use the default: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

[Airedale Studio]

Thanks Jao & Jim, I think I'll get a new ext' drive and set it up properly at the start. Too much trouble copying the HD!!

Great help.

Cheers

Paul

[Jao vdL]

Also make sure the externals are formatted to HFS+ or APFS and not some system incompatible format such as NTFS.