HELP !!! Photos library not accessible on external drive

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Level 1

12 points

HELP !!! Photos library not accessible on external drive

After upgrading my Macbook to OS BigSur 11.5.1 I can no longer open my photos library on an external SSD Drive. It used to work all the time, but now I get an error message. I wanted to change the access rights for the external drive, but this is not possible within the finder / information window.

Interestingly, I had two different libraries on the SSD. I copied the smaller one to the internal drive of my MacBook and then I was able to open it. Even after copying this library to a second SSD it was still accessible. However, the other library is too big for my internal drive. Therefore, I copied it directly from one SSD to the other. Unfortunately, this did not help.

Who does have an idea what I could do? Is this a problem of the new release? Could I go back to the previous OS version?

Many thanks!!!

Stefan

Posted on Aug 1, 2021 1:17 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

TonyCollinet

Level 7

23,861 points

Aug 1, 2021 1:41 PM in response to SGotthardt

Hi

I'm going to guess that the format of the external drive is ExFAT. This is an incompatible volume for a photos library - and with the update to 11.5.1, Big Sur will no longer open libraries on volumes with that format (or probably any other incompatible format)

You will need to move the library to a volume formatted APFS, or MacOS extended (journalled) - not case sensitive.

See

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517

For more info.

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Answer 2

SGotthardt Author

Level 1

12 points

Aug 2, 2021 1:46 PM in response to TonyCollinet

Hello Tony,

You are right! The drive I used was formatted with ExFat. It did work for years without problems. Apparently, Apple has stopped this with the new release. I have formatted another SSD with Journaled and copied the library from the ExFat SSD to the Journaled SSD. After that, I could read the library with the photos app.

Thanks very much

Stefan

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Answer 3

jjrocha

Level 1

4 points

Aug 6, 2021 8:33 AM in response to SGotthardt

Stefan,

Even though the external drive is ExFat, I found that if you go into Utilities -> Disk Utility, you should still see the drive. Highlight it, then in the right pane select "mount" and your libraries should be accessible on that drive.

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HELP !!! Photos library not accessible on external drive

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