Cannot move iPhone photos to Photo Library on my external hard drive

Operating with OS 17.4.1 and up until now it was easy to move photos from iPhone over to the photo library located on my external hard drive. I have been at this for 2 days now and nothing happens. What am I missing? Here's how I have done it before: open external hard drive > open photo library > click on my phone in left side bar > import new photos button and usually the import starts. Nothing occurs, help!

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Apr 5, 2024 01:48 PM

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Posted on May 24, 2024 10:45 PM

Guys, encountered similar issue that's why I searched in threads like these to solve the problem. Well, I found the solution! It seems to be a bug in iOS 17 and iOS 17.5.1 upgrade and a quick restart for both units solved the problem. No, Apple's silence didn't help. Good luck to us!

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3 replies

Apr 6, 2024 07:52 AM in response to flinthills

The first question we have to ask is, how is your external drive formatted. This is because, 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. The newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open. See this:

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


We need to know that answer to that before we can go much further...


May 23, 2024 01:18 PM in response to flinthills

I am having this same issue exactly the way it is being described. My external HDD is formatted correctly and I tried to copy the whole photo backup from my external HDD back to my MacBook. The import worked on that. I then copied it back to the external HDD and it doesn't allow to import. It used to work fine before the 17.4.1 update. I also updated my MacBook and iPhone to the latest version but no luck. Is this another new way for Apple to annoy its users?

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Cannot move iPhone photos to Photo Library on my external hard drive

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