Can't "ADD" photos to Catalog with External SSD (worked untill now)

[AlessioAndreani]

Hi

I have read many discussion about this but couldn't find a solution for my problem, these are the details:

- I use and external SSD as storage for all my photos

- I copy from camera SD to the external SSD and organize in folders myself (with name and date of the trip)

- I use "add" in Lightroom Import so I keep the photos in the external SSD and I use the same folder name structure in Lightroom Library

- I've used this since the beginning (more than 8 years now)

- Lighroom Classic CC is updated to last version available today

- Since few days I can't "add" to catalog from External SSD anymore, only copy the all photos

- I use Mac and the external SSD is formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

- The external SSD includes a lot of folders named: "location of trip - dates", e.g. "Cornwall - 10-15 October 2018".

I'm aware that Lightroom doesn't permit to Add from a thumb drive or camera SD/CF/XQD, but this is not the case since it's an external SSD and also using the Terminal I can see the external SSD is recognized as "fixed" by MacOS (not wrongly recognized as "removable").

So, if the OS seems to recognize the SSD correctly as a Fixed external SSD, and everything was correctly working for years, what could be the problem? How can I fix it?

This problem is causing a lot of trouble to my workflow and the post-processing queue is getting longer.

Thanks

Alessio

[Chiotas]

Same problem here..please help!

[Todd Shaner]

AlessioAndreani  wrote

So, if the OS seems to recognize the SSD correctly as a Fixed external SSD, and everything was correctly working for years, what could be the problem? How can I fix it?

This may be due to an OS X upgrade. The preferred format for internal and external drives is now APFS.

https://tidbits.com/2018/07/23/what-apfs-does-for-you-and-what-you-can-do-with-apfs/

Backup the SSD drive data to and format it to APFS. It can't say for sure it will fix this LR issue, but it's worthwhile change.

[AlessioAndreani]

Hi Todd

thanks for the hint, I'll also try to do that, I'm short of ideas and definitely try this too.

Thanks

[johnrellis]

Just to double-check, can you copy files to the external SSD using Finder since you did the Mac OS upgrade?  Perhaps Mac OS thinks the volume is read-only.

[AlessioAndreani · Accepted solution]

Hi guys

thanks all for the reply, I've actually fixed updating do MacOS Mojave, after the update the external SSD is recognized (without formatting or other changes).

Thanks a lot for the help!

Alessio

[johnrellis]

I've actually fixed updating to MacOS Mojave,

What went wrong with the update?  (I'm waiting for the .1 release.)

Glad you got it resolved.