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Library module Renaming, moving files in Library on new Mac computer

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Joseph Ward

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Joined
Oct 9, 2017
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3
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Operating System: macOS 10

Lightroom Version: 10.12 [4]
(Please go to Help menu > System Info to double check the exact version number)

Question or Description of Problem:I have just moved form Windows to Mac. Successfully (in spite of myself) transferred 20,000 photos over. They are on a Seagate external hard drive. Unfortunately I cannot move or rename photos. There is no such problem when connecting the EHD to the Windows PC.
On attempting to rename a photo I get the message: "Some photos will not be named because they are missing or not writable".
I have tried reinstalling Lightroom to no avail. Lightroom is the only download to the new computor so far - apart from Firefox although Lightroom installation preceded this.
I have also tried using previous backup catalogues with previous backup library databases to no avail either.
I would be grateful for assistance.
Regards
Joseph

 
Is your external hard disk perhaps formatted in NTFS? Macs can read that disk format, but they cannot write to it, unless you use a special driver like the ones from Paragon. Macs can read and write to ExFAT however, so if you reformat the disk and copy the images again, it should work.
 
tha
Is your external hard disk perhaps formatted in NTFS? Macs can read that disk format, but they cannot write to it, unless you use a special driver like the ones from Paragon. Macs can read and write to ExFAT however, so if you reformat the disk and copy the images again, it should work.[/QUOTE

Thank you for your prompt reply Johan,
To reformat the disk will that not delete the content?
 
Yes, reformatting will indeed delete the content. There is no way around that. If you cannot copy the images onto the reformatted disk again, then your only option is to get a driver that makes the Mac able to write to NTFS. Read/write access to NTFS in macOS Sierra - Paragon NTFS for Mac® 15
Success! Thank you very much for your advice. Juggling with EHDs and reformattings (without any disaster luckily) Lightroom is now up and running perfectly on my new computer.
Many thanks Johann
 
Yes, reformatting will indeed delete the content. There is no way around that. If you cannot copy the images onto the reformatted disk again, then your only option is to get a driver that makes the Mac able to write to NTFS. Read/write access to NTFS in macOS Sierra - Paragon NTFS for Mac® 15
I wanted to bump this post for prominence.
This is the solution for those using Lightroom across different platforms (Mac and Windows).
Paragon (and others) provide free utilities that allow NTFS formatted disks to be read/write in Mac OS as well as allowing HFS format to be read/write in Windows.

Do not go for the ex-fat32 option...

Tony Jay
 
Do not go for the ex-fat32 option...
Without further support, this is not a valid reason to recommend using a third party app to intercept and handle reads and writes on NTFS volumes on a Mac. exFAT/FAT32 is a valid file system for both Windows and Mac. It is the filesystem that is used to format most high capacity camera cards.
 
Without further support, this is not a valid reason to recommend using a third party app to intercept and handle reads and writes on NTFS volumes on a Mac. exFAT/FAT32 is a valid file system for both Windows and Mac. It is the filesystem that is used to format most high capacity camera cards.
No issue with the camera cards.
However, several years ago when I researched a dual Windows/Mac OS workflow for Lightroom, exFAT and FAT32 had significant disadvantages - I will admit that the reasons, mostly, escape me know because it is a long time since I have had to review this kind of data. I do seem to recall limitations related to disk size, but I could be wrong.
Using Paragon, or similar utility, was by far and away the best option with practically no downsides as I recall.
(I get your conservative approach but I have used this utility seamlessly for several years now including updates in OS on both the Mac and Windows side of my workflow.)
Perhaps, given Johan's post, one is now cost, although I recently updated my version of Paragon with no issue and no cost.
 
Individual files on a FAT32 drive can’t be over 4 GB in size. A FAT32 partition must also be less than 8 TB.
Individual files on an exFAT drive can be as large as 16 exabytes (16,000,000,000 GB) in size. An exFAT partition can be as large as 128 petabytes (128,000,000 GB).
 
Hope you don't mind me jumping on this thread but my question is related.
Background - I've just replaced my external drive on my iMac. Was just using it for backup option when importing but replaced it for larger drive as I'm going to start transferring all my old home video tapes to digital then edit them probably using Adobe Premiere Elements. I'm also considering using it for all my LR images (at the moment keep current year on iMac and all previous years on NAS). As I also have window machines it would be good if the external drive can be read by both.
Reading this thread I've just checked the external drive and it's format is "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
Considering there will be some pretty large video files and that I'd like it read/writable on both Mac & Windows what should it be formatted to ?
Form reading above it sounds like exFat but if that is the case what downsides are there using exFat ? I presume there must be some or everyone would use that format.
Many thanks
 
Not everyone is aware of ExFat or indeed other disk formats and may be using formats that they are vaguely familiar with. Also, there is a smaller population of people who want to be able to switch drives between Mac Windows and or Linux.
 
Not everyone is aware of ExFat or indeed other disk formats and may be using formats that they are vaguely familiar with. Also, there is a smaller population of people who want to be able to switch drives between Mac Windows and or Linux.

That's the whole point here. The OP moved from Windows to Mac, so he needed a disk format that is supported by both. For a Mac only user I would not advise to use exFAT, but a native Apple format (HFS+) and a Windows only user might prefer NTFS.
 
Last edited:
Or the new Native format APFS

I would not advise it yet right now, because I understand there may still be some issues with third party SSD. But yes, in future I would certainly advise that. My MacBook Pro is already upgraded to APFS and everything runs fine.
 
Please let me know if this is not the place to post this question.. this is my first time on site. I have a mid-2010 MacBook Pro w/external hard drive for all photos/editing. Use Lightroom 6.? on my laptop. I just got a new iMac (Sierra) to edit photos and video. I've been able to copy/move my Lightroom to the new iMac and it's working fine. I can plug in my external hard drive and see my pictures and can edit. But when I unplug the external hard drive and plug into the other computer (MacBook), the MacBook doesn't see the edits on the external drive that I just did on the iMac. Can anyone help me or direct me to knowledge for this?

EDIT/ADD: It goes both ways.. if I edit on my MacBook, the iMac doesn't see the edits. If I edit on my iMac, the MacBook doesn't see the edits. They only see the edits that were done with the respective computer.
 
I would not advise it yet right now, because I understand there may still be some issues with third party SSD. But yes, in future I would certainly advise that. My MacBook Pro is already upgraded to APFS and everything runs fine.
My MBP SSD upgrades automatically and did not seem too incur any appreciable additional install time over that of my iMac with a fusion drive. MacOS is not yet updating the Fusion Drives to APFS. I would like to think Apple is aware of the drives that can not be converted to APFS and would bypass those like they did my Fusion drive. I had an empty HDD that was formatted HFS+ and I reformatted it to APFS with nary a wrinkle.
 
Please let me know if this is not the place to post this question.. this is my first time on site. I have a mid-2010 MacBook Pro w/external hard drive for all photos/editing. Use Lightroom 6.? on my laptop. I just got a new iMac (Sierra) to edit photos and video. I've been able to copy/move my Lightroom to the new iMac and it's working fine. I can plug in my external hard drive and see my pictures and can edit. But when I unplug the external hard drive and plug into the other computer (MacBook), the MacBook doesn't see the edits on the external drive that I just did on the iMac. Can anyone help me or direct me to knowledge for this?

EDIT/ADD: It goes both ways.. if I edit on my MacBook, the iMac doesn't see the edits. If I edit on my iMac, the MacBook doesn't see the edits. They only see the edits that were done with the respective computer.
Welcome the this forum!
Maybe it would be better indeed to start a new topic for this issue.

However, it's important to understand the concept of Lightroom. It does not 'touch' the images while editing, these edits are kept in the database of Lightroom and are showed to you when you click on the image in Lightroom (this is called non destructive editing).

So, when you made a copy of your first Lightroom instance (catalog) and put it on your second computer all edits came along. New edits however made on one of the computers is not transfered to the other via the images automaticaly.
There is an option however, you can export the edited images 'as catalog' (this is a menu option). You can 'import catalog' these on the other machine.

A lot of people use this 'travel catalog' + 'master catalog' construction where the master contains all your photo's and the travel catalog only a (temporarily) subset.
 
My MBP SSD upgrades automatically and did not seem too incur any appreciable additional install time over that of my iMac with a fusion drive. MacOS is not yet updating the Fusion Drives to APFS. I would like to think Apple is aware of the drives that can not be converted to APFS and would bypass those like they did my Fusion drive. I had an empty HDD that was formatted HFS+ and I reformatted it to APFS with nary a wrinkle.

SSD startup disks are automatically converted to APFS, Fusion Drives are not yet supported. The question is whether you should already use APFS for external disks. What are the advantages (if any) and what are the disadvantages? The disadvantages are clear: if you have another Mac that is not running High Sierra, or you want to share the disk with another Mac user that has not upgraded yet, you may find that the APFS disk is not writable or even not recognized at all. Apple File System FAQ: How APFS works with older Macs, encryption, external drives, and other questions
 
Many thanks, information about various formats very interesting.
Did a bit of searching and found:
"The standard exFAT implementation is not journaled and only uses a single file allocation table and free space map. FAT file systems instead used alternating tables, as this allowed recovery of the file system if the media was ejected during a write (which occurs frequently in practice with removable media)."
I found this backed up with a number of people saying they have not been able to recover corrupted data as successfully with exFat compared to other formats.
I'm not technical but sounds like valid comments. What do you think ?

Johan your comment about the whole point here was the OP needed Mac/Windows access has made me think. Really I was only thinking that it would be handy to be able to access the external drive from Mac and Windows but I don't actually need it so think I'll leave the external drive formatted as it is ( "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" ) and just use it with the Mac. Unless a different format would be better for video editing on a Mac considering the big field you have to deal with.
I backup my Mac and external drive to my NAS anyway so can always access that backup from my Windows machines if need to.

Thanks again, very helpful.
 
Welcome the this forum!
Maybe it would be better indeed to start a new topic for this issue.

However, it's important to understand the concept of Lightroom. It does not 'touch' the images while editing, these edits are kept in the database of Lightroom and are showed to you when you click on the image in Lightroom (this is called non destructive editing).

So, when you made a copy of your first Lightroom instance (catalog) and put it on your second computer all edits came along. New edits however made on one of the computers is not transfered to the other via the images automaticaly.
There is an option however, you can export the edited images 'as catalog' (this is a menu option). You can 'import catalog' these on the other machine.

A lot of people use this 'travel catalog' + 'master catalog' construction where the master contains all your photo's and the travel catalog only a (temporarily) subset.

Thank you Roelof! That helps and I will try the "export/import" process. I'm really starting to second-guess my choice on the iMac over the MacBook.
 
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