iMovie 11 cannot see contents of external drive

Make sure that the Projects and Events folders are stored at the root level (i.e, not in any other folder) of your external drive. Otherwise iMovie won't find them. Other than that, you might check to see if your external drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) that works best with Apple. If you reformat the drive with the Disk Utility app on your Mac, be sure first to back up everything on it that you want to keep, because reformatting will erase all data on the drive. Further, if you have a Time Machine backup drive you might be able to restore your Projects and Events folders from there.

-- Rich

In addition to what Rich has posted.

Movement of Events and Projects in iMovie '11( Ver 9) have to be done from within iMovie.

Problems occur if you just move the folders,as you have discovered.

AppleMan 1958 posted some info some time ago.

How can i move or copy projects and events to an external drive? (Version 9 and earlier)

Some points to note however.

In his first link about Projects, he mentions an error about Event library which should be Project library.

In his second link concerning moving Events, this link seems to take you back to the first link .

If this happens it should be this.

http://help.apple.com/imovie/#mov3ac6d42c

https://help.apple.com/imovie/#mov3ac6d42c

https://help.apple.com/imovie/#mov3ac6d42c

https://help.apple.com/imovie/#mov3ac6d42c

Only one of these should have appeared above not 4.

http://help.apple.com/imovie/#mov3ac6d42c

Here are copy /paste of the pages in the links by AppleMan 1958 as all the links on my machine take me to the first link that is opened, no matter which is the first opened.

Copy or move a project to an external hard disk

You can copy or move your iMovie video projects to a compatible external hard disk. Moving or copying projects is useful if you want to work on a project using another computer that has iMovie installed, or if you want to free up space on your computer’s hard disk.

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To copy or move a project to a hard disk:

1. Connect an external hard disk to your computer.An icon for the hard disk appears in the Event Library.Note: To use an external hard disk with iMovie, it must be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). iMovie doesn’t support network-attached storage or external flash memory drives.
2. In the Project Library, click to select the project you want to copy or move, and then do one of the following:
   • To copy the project, drag it to the icon of the hard disk (in the Event Library) to which you want to copy it, and then choose “Copy project” or “Copy project and Events.”If you choose “Copy project,” none of the project’s video and other media (such as photos) is copied to the other disk. Rather, the project in its new location refers to the media in its original location. This means that in order to view or further edit the project in its new location, the hard disk where it’s located must be connected to the computer the project was copied from.If you choose “Copy projects and Events,” the source video and other media you added to the project are copied to the new location, which means you can view and edit the project in its new location without being connected to the computer it was copied from.
   • To move the project, hold down the Command key as you drag the project to the icon of the hard disk you want to move it to, and then choose “Move project” or “Move project and Events.”If you choose “Move project,” none of the project’s source video and other media (such as photos) is moved to the other disk. Rather, the project in its new location refers to the media in its original location. This means that in order to view or further edit the project in its new location, the hard disk where it’s located must be connected to the computer the project was moved from.If you choose “Move projects and Events,” the source video and other media you added to the project are moved to the new location and deleted from their original location, which means that you can view and edit the project in its new location without being connected to the computer the project was moved from. This also means that any projects still on the original computer that use footage that was moved refer to the footage in its new location. To view and edit these projects, the computer where they’re located must be connected to the hard disk the project was moved to.

Moving or copying a large project can take several minutes.

You can consolidate all the media used in a project onto the same disk. This makes it easy to move the project and edit it from any computer that has iMovie installed. Go to this topic to learn how: Consolidate a project’s media.

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Copy or move video from your Event Library to an external hard disk

To save space on your computer’s hard disk, you can move video in your Event Library to an external hard disk connected to your computer.

You can also copy Events to an external hard disk. You might do this, for example, to create a duplicate copy of your entire video library or to copy an Event to a friend’s hard disk.

Note: To use an external hard disk with iMovie, it must be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). iMovie doesn’t support network-attached storage or external flash memory drives.

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To copy or move Events to another hard disk:

1. Connect a compatible external hard disk drive to your computer.
2. In iMovie, click the Hard Disk button to see all available hard disks, which are listed in your Event Library. The button is located in the upper-right corner of the Event Library.
3. Select the Events you want to move or copy. To select more than one Event at a time, press Command as you click Event names.
4. Do one of the following:
   • To copy the Events, drag them to the icon of the hard disk, in the Event Library, you want to copy them to.
   • To move the Events, hold down the Command key as you drag the Events to the icon of the hard disk you want to move them to.The Events are moved, and they’re deleted from the original location. Any projects using clips from the moved Events refer to the clips at their new location. This means that the hard disk to which you have moved the Events must be connected to the computer where the projects are in order for you to play or further edit the projects in iMovie.If you’re moving a large amount of video at once, this process may take several minutes.

Consolidate a project’s media

If any of the video, music, and other media in a project is stored on a hard disk other than the one on which the project itself is stored, you can consolidate all the media used in the project onto the same disk as the project.

Consolidating a project’s media makes it easy to collect a complete project on your computer or on one disk so that you can then edit the project from any computer that has iMovie installed.

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To consolidate a project’s media:

1. Connect all external hard disks containing your project media to your computer.
2. Open the project or select it in the Project Library, and then choose File > Consolidate Media.The File menu appears in a light gray bar across the top of your computer screen.Note: If the Consolidate Media menu item is dimmed, all of the media used in your project is already on the same disk as the project.
3. Do one of the following:
   • To copy Events that contain clips used in the project to the same disk as the project, click “Copy the Events.”
   • To copy only the video in the clips used in the project to the same disk as the project, click “Copy the clips.”
   • To move Events that contain clips used in the project to the same disk as the project, click “Move the Events.” The Events are deleted from their previous locations.
   In all three cases, any iTunes songs used in the project are also copied to the same disk as the project.