You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

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

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 1, 2021 1:41 PM

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.



Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

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.



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

HELP !!! Photos library not accessible on external drive

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.