Catalina won't display "more info" on JPG images (external drive)

Thanks so much for the effort! It's made me think about it more. The same file copied to another external drive (or boot SSD desktop) DOES show the full info.

So -

1. The file info isn't missing -

and

• 2 - it's something global to do with the HDD. • One of my other externals is also behaving this way! • (That's now two of them!) All JPGs on both external drives behave this way.

Checking further - Another external drive isn't showing this problem. Neither does the iMac internal.

Other than the SSD all my externals have been formatted GUID HFS+ (99.9% sure about this)

The Internal Fusion is APFS as is the SSD.

I thought at first maybe my Chronosync copying stripped some metadata info - but making copies of files and seeing the full data on the copy, eliminated that possibility....

Thanks again.

Is there anything unusual about the way you originally moved or copied those files over to that external disk that does not show the more info?

Its mostly been a mix of drag copy and Chronosync (a program that clones files/drives and more). As a SUPER simple test - I copied a screenshot from my current boot SSD Catalina desktop to each of the other drives. Two out of 3 I tried this with do not show the file info. (see below)

Do you have any non-Apple disk tools installed in connection with any of these external drives?

Nothing

Any other security, anti-virus, or "clean" software or tools?

None - I avoid these types of programs. The whole point of putting Catalina on the SSD was to strip the boot drive down to bare minimums.

FWIW I do photography and have tens of thousands of images on these (backup/work) drives - so the "info" is more than just a convenience for me.

Complete drive info screenshot. Seagate 8TB and WD 5TB at the top are both not showing the file info - Macintosh HD (internal) and Seagate 8TB 2021 both display the file info properly. I've got other externals to test as well, but for now figuring it on on these would be nice. Apple Disk Utility First Aid - didn't help. Permissions on all the external drives at the root level are the same.

I am wondering if your external drive, where the images show nothing for the More Info in the Finder Get Info panel, is not indexed by Spotlight (Images).

You might be onto something here. I had previously put both the offending drives into Spotlight quarantine (do not index) - on my Mojave system (internal Fusion HDD). Even though I did a clean install on the brand new SSD, with a different MacOS - booting externally - inexplicably, somehow those preferences are still there. (No migrating anything!). I've now removed one of those drives from quarantine. It might take a day or more to index but we shall see if that's the solution. I'm guessing this might be it...

Also, the Finder Preview Window and Preview Options panel allow more information as one scrolls in that Preview window, than is possible to display in the Get Info panel. When you open that same JPG from the external drive in Preview, and open Preview's Inspector (⌘+i), do you have General, Exif, GPS, and TIFF tabs available (with respective data) under the Info ⓘ toolbar item?

Yes tried - Get Info has been completely empty to this point.

UPDATE - SOLVED! The drives being in Spotlight quarantine was the cause. Once the drive was removed from quarantine - the crawl updated the new data (indexing) and it began to appear on images again. My guess is - the drives themselves are flagged with the "do not index" tag when set to this state. So even though I changed systems, they held on to the quarantine flags until told otherwise.

To amend my reply - IN PREVIEW - get Info shows the data. IN FINDER - it does not.