Photos library on external drive cant import "there is an error attempting to free up disk space..." (APFS,sufficient storage)

Hello vito108,

It sounds like you need specific help with your external drive not allowing you to save files to it, even with available storage space. The first few steps to start with relating to this issue are in this article: If your Mac can't save files to an external drive

You might have already looked through that. The next thing to do is to run a check then possible repair on that drive with Disk Utility. Use the steps here: How to repair a Mac disk with Disk Utility

You could also isolate the issue if it's just when you try to move new photo files or any files. That will narrow down if the issue is specific to what you are saving (importing) or the drive overall. Reply back with how it goes.

Best regards.

I had the same problem. I updated my computer and iPhone but still no dice. So I went into Disk Utility and ran the first aid tool on the external hard drive. That did the trick.

Are you opening both the library on the external drive and the system photo library on the internal drive at various times, perhaps switching back and forth between them? You may have maintenance processes accessing both of them for extended periods of time. The only ways to be certain they all stop more or less on demand is to log off or to shut down.

If you are in less of a hurry, you could try the eject command repeatedly until it worked, but that could take a very long time depending on how much work is queued up for those background processes.

Your system photos library will always be in use and should always be available, as long as you are signed into your user account, as Mark explained. Photos may lose the connection to your system photos library and then switch to a library on the internal drive, if the external is not available.

What kind of Mac are you using? If it is a Desktop model, you could keep the external drive connected at all times. On a portable Mac, keep it also connected and eject it only, if you have to carry the Mac with you to a different location. But then you may want to shut the Mac down anyway before you pack it up to move it.

if it is too limiting for you to keep your external drive connected at all times, set up a small system photos library on the internal drive and, just for your favorite photos that you ned to access from other apps or sync with iCloud, and keep the the larger library on the external as an additional library for archiving your photos.

swixios wrote: I am using an external drive which has around 150GB free space remaining. It's formatted in exFat format and have been working fine until today.

Did you look at the previous posts? Photos does not support using an exFat drive. At all. Never did. It might appear to work for awhile, and then bang-- exFat corrupts the Library. This has been true through a number of operating systems. There are several other considerations, so see this:

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

"People have had so much trouble with exFat and other formats that the newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open."

If your Library is not too badly corrupted, you may be able to transfer it to an APFS formatted volume and rebuild the Library. If that doesn't work, you can recover the original pictures, but edits and new metadata may be lost.

> external SSD (exFat) drive which I have the Photo Library

Photos library must be stored on APFS or MacOS Extended volume. Non-Mac formats like exFAT etc are not supported and might well corrupt the library.

emir hakan wrote: I still have the same issue. I have my external SSD (exFat) drive which I have the Photo Library.

Usually it's better when you have a problem to start your own specific post. But let me say that the most important thing I saw in your post here was the above statement. To avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted. You didn't say what macOS you are using, but people have had so much trouble with exFat and other formats that the newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open, since there is so much background activity dealing with the Photos database.

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Honestly, there's nothing we can do to help if the Library is kept on an incompatible drive.

I think i found where the issue was. After updating my Mac OS to 14.4.1. I feel the system is not allowing to import photos to exfat drives. I tries fresh drives with exfat format and even that wont allow me to import photos. I eventually had to convert my drive to APFS and now its working fine. I had to copy the file to a separate drive and then move it back to the APFS drive for it to work. Thankfully i had additional drives with enough space to copy the files, while i formatted the originally used external drive.

There's a reason the system doesn't want to eject your external drive after using Photos. There are a number of background processes that access your Photos library even when Photos isn't running. They do things like scan for people and objects in your photos.

If you need to disconnect the external drive containing the library, you should set down the computer, or at least log off your user account. Force ejecting the drive while the library is being accessed can damage the library.

I still have the same issue. I have my external SSD (exFat) drive which I have the Photo Library.

When I open the Photo Library, I can access my images and videos which were there in the first place. However, whenever I want to import from a file located on my Mac or also in the same SSD drive, the import starts and stops in one second and does not give any warning.

When I try to drag an image to the Photo Library, then it gives the following warning: "Cannot Import Item ... Reason: There was an error attempting to free up disk space for import."

It is really frustrating that Photos Library fails in the most basic feature. I tried restarting my Mac, and nothing helps. I was considering to restore the SSD and convert it to APFS, however I see that you also have the same issue.

Note: An additional problem is that whenever I try to import from iPhone to the Photo Library, it does not get the metadata such as the original date of the images, which messes up all the order, and I also avoid doing that.

Any suggestions?

Same issue with me. While i am trying to import media in my Photos app, from my system's Download folder, I am getting an error “There was an error attempting to free up disk space for import”.

I am using an external drive which has around 150GB free space remaining. Its formatted in exFat format and have been working fine until today.

I tried to copy other file to the External Drive, which works fine.

Even when i am trying to import photos from my iPhone using cable connection, the import will not work, but it will not give me any error during an import attempt from my Iphone. It just moves to the Import Album and does nothing.

When I tried to airdrop to my mac, it used to give me option to ‘Save the file in Download’ or ‘Open in Photos’. Now I don’t get that option, it just saves the file to Download folder by default.

I tried to switch my photo library to local drive by creating a new Library in system drive, even then i am no longer getting the option to Open in Photos for airdrop photos.

Now I am wondering if this is caused by the Mac OS update that took place today. It was a minor update for some bug fixes. The updated version is Mac OS Sonoma 14.4.1 (23E224).

I am using a M2 Mac Mini. The external drive i am using is a 10GB/s NVMe drive.

Yes there is. Launch Activity Monitor and under CPU search for any process with photo in its name. You should something like this:

Select each one in turn and use the X button to quit the process (or force quit if necessary). Then try to eject the drive. Continue with each process until you can eject the drive. Remember which ones you quit for the next time you want to eject the drive. You can select them all and quit at one time.