New iMac can't open catalog on external HD

[melewen]

I just got a new iMac and am looking forward to doing most or all of my post-processing on its gigundo screen. I keep my entire LR catalog on an external HD, along with all of my photos. No problems at all reading the catalog on my Macbook Pro. I tried opening the catalog on my iMac and it keeps giving me errors: can't open, isn't writable, not sure why but we can't open this, etc.

I've verified that each parent folder has Read & Write access. I've deleted any lrcat lock files. I optimized the catalog on my Macbook Pro.

What can I do? I've tried getting in touch with Adobe but their UX kind of just forcibly directs me here and say good luck!

[dj_paige]

I tried opening the catalog on my iMac and it keeps giving me errors: can't open, isn't writable, not sure why but we can't open this, etc.

What is the exact error message, word-for-word?

[melewen]

"Lightroom cannot use the catalog named "Lightroom Catalog Current" because it is not writable and cannot be opened."

[dj_paige]

So you saidd that you verified that parent folders have read and write permission ... But this doesn't sound right  to me. You want to verify that the folder that contains the catalog file has read and write permission. Please give that a try.

Also, I'm not a Mac expert, but there are conditions where transferring a drive to a new computer could result in the drive being un-writable. I don't know the details, but maybe some Mac expert coudl tell us what could possibly make a drive read-only.

[melewen]

This is when access from the iMac, too. And it's totally readable and writable from my Macbook Pro. It makes no sense!