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iMovie does not read external drive

My iMovie 10.3.4 stopped reading (scrolling) files from a 2 TB external solid state drive. I can open the drive and I can scroll down to view all the files without iMovie. This happened today, after adding several large videos and a few images into the 2 TB external drive. imovie was reading the files and importing to "MY Media", yesterday. Suddenly the iMovie no long sees, recognizes, pulls up any of the files on the 2 TB drive. In addition, today, I can go from one external drive, to the other, but iMovie does not pull up any files, the drives appear empty. The only location that iMovie reads is the Desktop.

Two months ago, another external drive could not be read. I attached a new solid state drive which worked fine until today. The external drive which iMovie cannot read anymore has about 1.9 TB available out of a 2 TB external drive. Now I can only read (scroll) the Desktop files. Any ideas

Posted on Oct 25, 2022 10:26 AM

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Posted on Oct 25, 2022 11:18 AM

Hi, Progtoday,


The first thing is to do a little trouble shooting.


Try rebooting your computer and see if that will trigger recognition of the drive.


If no luck, try deleting preferences. To delete preferences, open iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and select to delete preferences in the box that appears. iMovie will open in a new library. Reopen your old library to get back to your projects. Now see if iMovie will recognize the drive. Possibly you may need to reboot to set the changes.  Deleting preferences is a safe procedure that will not cause data loss or disruption to your project.


Failing that, go to System Preferences>Security & Privacy>Privacy and add Full Disk Access for iMovie.



Then click on Files and Folders and Automation and add iMovie where possible.


Next Control-click on the external drive's icon and select Get Info. Make sure that the "Ignore Ownership on this Volume" box is checked at the bottom of the Get Info dialogue box. All confirm that your preferences are correctly set for Read and Write.



Check to see that your cable plug-in connection for the external drive is tight at both the drive and the Mac.


Now see if iMovie will read the external drive.


If still having trouble, it might be that your Mac's socket for plugging in the external drives is defective. You could run an Apple Diagnostics hardware check to see if it detects a defect. Normally I might suspect that perhaps the external drive is failing, but that's not likely here since the issue presents on more than one external drive.


-- Rich












-- Rich

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 25, 2022 11:18 AM in response to Progtoday

Hi, Progtoday,


The first thing is to do a little trouble shooting.


Try rebooting your computer and see if that will trigger recognition of the drive.


If no luck, try deleting preferences. To delete preferences, open iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and select to delete preferences in the box that appears. iMovie will open in a new library. Reopen your old library to get back to your projects. Now see if iMovie will recognize the drive. Possibly you may need to reboot to set the changes.  Deleting preferences is a safe procedure that will not cause data loss or disruption to your project.


Failing that, go to System Preferences>Security & Privacy>Privacy and add Full Disk Access for iMovie.



Then click on Files and Folders and Automation and add iMovie where possible.


Next Control-click on the external drive's icon and select Get Info. Make sure that the "Ignore Ownership on this Volume" box is checked at the bottom of the Get Info dialogue box. All confirm that your preferences are correctly set for Read and Write.



Check to see that your cable plug-in connection for the external drive is tight at both the drive and the Mac.


Now see if iMovie will read the external drive.


If still having trouble, it might be that your Mac's socket for plugging in the external drives is defective. You could run an Apple Diagnostics hardware check to see if it detects a defect. Normally I might suspect that perhaps the external drive is failing, but that's not likely here since the issue presents on more than one external drive.


-- Rich












-- Rich

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Oct 25, 2022 12:23 PM in response to Rich839

Another thing you might try is to do a redownload of iMovie. To do that, drag your iMovie app from the Appliations folder to the trash, but do not empty the trash. Then sign in to the online app store and display your account. You should see displayed the icons of apps that you have acquired on your Mac. iMovie will be one of them. You can redownload iMovie from there. If for some reason you can't get a redownload, you can drag your present iMovie app out of the trash and place it back into the Applications folder.


-- Rich

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iMovie does not read external drive

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