LR won't allow Add only copy and import

 OK. I keep running up against this annoyuing thing. I noticed too that I cannot "add" ever since I moved all my photos to an external SD card. Now I am finding out that everything needs to be local?

WHT IS THE POINT??? I do not have that much room on my laptop and I keep the catalog local, but the phtos on this drive where they will not be clogging up my laptop. But now LIghtoroom is not working correctly. It takes forever for it to load. Actually, in order to get it to "respond" I ahve to go to task manager and select the program I wnnt to "end task" but not actually do it. This is not an acceptable workaround. I have tried disabling the graphics card. I have tried everything.

Thing is. We use these SD cards because I was sold a bill of goods about now I do not need a gigantic laptop beause I nave OneDrive and an SD card. But lightroom does not work correctly with either of those. I DO NOT WANT MY PHOTOS STORED LOCALLY. Such a complete mess. I do not know what to do.

Do I have to buy an external drive? I guess I do?? Or will that not work either? I would like to know before I spend $100 on something that does not work. 

I was led to this thread because when importing phtos into the drive, it will only let me copy not "add."

There needs to be an entire rethink of how people are using laptops because it is becoming more and more impossible to get anything over 150GB without spending $10K

YOU CAN.

I also want to manage my mobile phone SD card(512G) using LR, becoz the DCIM folder has 5k+ photos. 

1. First, u need a basic real HD or network HD on ur LR collection.

2. create a new folder XXX on that.

3. then the magic part over here; right-click that empty XXX folder and select re-locate folder path.

4. [re-locate folderpath] chose ur SD card root drive or DCIM

5. then u will get a SD folder on ur collection

6. right click update, which is ADD not COPY. DONE.

http://decade.tw

In your import dialog, under Source, are you looking in Devices (bad) or Files (Adobe prefered). Mind you, Devices may or may not be displayed. Adobe dislikes use of Source/Devices seeing that as  problematic.

Hello all, I just started having this same issue, it seems after updating my MacOS to Catalina. I have worked this way for many years. I copy the images from my SD card to my External into a folder. I then drag that folder either to LR app grid view or to the LR icon, this opens the import dialog, I cull through the images if needed, then click the Import button. BAM! But it seems to be randomly working. I'm not sure of the issue. The folder permissions are good, nothing changed there.

Hi

I think I may have a solution, however temporary.

I was just trying to add some pictures from a flash drive but LR was only letting me copy/copy as DNG

On the left hand side of Lightroom, underneath the Navigator and Catalog sections there's the section called Folders. I put the photos I needed to add (a mixture of CR2 and JPG files) in a specific folder on the drive (they were loose on the drive before) and added it to the folder section.

Then, when going back to the import screen, I was able to select ADD and could access my photos in Lightroom! The flash drive now shows up with the same little green tab as my C drive in the Folders section, which I'm guessing means they're just both online and can be accessed the same way.

Also, I did change the permissions on my flash drive to read and write before adding it to Folders, not sure if that helped, but in case this method is tried and doesn't work, I'd check that.

Hope this helps!

Lightroom is treating the SSD like a memory card or thumb drive. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’d start by checking the permissions on the drive. Make sure you have read and write permissions.

Your screen capture shows your ”To” location going to “DELETE”. This is curious to me. You definitely don’t want to do that.