Skip to main content
H
HaydenMeade
Participant
June 29, 2019
Answered

"Macintosh HD" is Read Only - MacOS Catalina 10.15

  • June 29, 2019
  • 6 replies
  • 87039 views

I've been having an issue when opening Lightroom CC. I have tried several solutions for over 2 hours and I've had no success.

Problem(s)

The first noticeable problem is on startup, Lightroom tells me that my hard drive is Read-Only and that I need to either change it's permissions or select a new storage location. So the first solution I tried was to select my external hard drive as the new destination to save files. At first I thought that it worked, the error message went away, I tried to import my photos to get to work and when get to the final import page, Lightroom gives me another error telling me 1 of either 2 things: A) The disk needs X amount of more storage to import, please free up space and try again or B) Error occurred when checking disk space.

When it gave me solution A, I did delete space and it gave me the exact same error message afterward. But that error shouldn't be happening either way. I have over 70gb of free space on my internal drive and 2TB on my External.

What I've tried to do

I have googled the cuss out of this issue. I've tried using Adobe's own script for terminal twice with no success. Solutions to Adobe Lightroom Lightroom user permission issues on launch - that didn't work. I thought maybe it could be a problem with my hard drive, so I ran disk utility and found corruption. I repaired my disk in recovery mode and thought everything was fixed. But still the problem kept happening. I found a youtube video Adobe Lightroom Classic User Permissions Issues-Fix-macOS - YouTube - that didn't work.

After that, I figured that it was more than likely a problem that's specific to the beta version of Catalina and that maybe I just needed to change Lightroom's permissions in my system preferences. So I gave Lightroom complete and total access to my files and folders. I thought for sure I had solved the problem and that the error message would go away. But it didn't. It's still here and I still can't edit or even import my photos.

Please help me, there have been a few other things that I've tried as well, like resetting Lightroom's preferences, but that hasn't worked either. If you have any solutions, I'd love to hear them. I think it might come down to me downgrading from Catalina but I'm hoping to avoid that. Thank you.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer artems74221965

    I've been able to bypass this issue by mounting OS volume as writable (which is read-only in Catalina) using "mount -uw /" command in Terminal. Works until restart, after that it will become read-only again and you have to remount it again.

    6 replies

    R
    RBENNETT19
    Participant
    July 28, 2020

    You're a life saver! I can't tell you how many PC terminal commands I was using for the past 12 hours! My hero! Lmao!

    phantom.me
    phantom.me
    Participant
    November 19, 2019

    I granted Lightroom Full Disk Access and it didnt work.

    Updated to Lightroom V3.0 20191017-0835-b386176 and it worked.

    No import error messages now.

    (This may be way after the fact, but before updating LR I could not import any photos and had error message on opening.)

    Catalina 10.15.1 (19B88)

    L
    lvangent
    Participant
    October 11, 2019

    Mr Apple has made changes to browing the file system by applications.

    open your settings > security & Privacy.

    Select tab privacy and scroll down the left list until you see "Full Disk Access"

    Add your application to this and you won't have the read only problem again.

     

      Faravahar
      Faravahar
      Participant
      November 1, 2019

      Thanks for the prompt. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in the released 10.15 OSX Catalina. Damn it, Apple and Adobe!

      N
      nathansmith
      Participant
      October 9, 2019

      Easy way is just to selec the disk, (Command-I on Mac), then go to the bottom and click on "Ignore Ownership on this Volume" (you may have to unlock the lock), and it should now be writeable with no issues. 

      A
      artems74221965Correct answer
      Participant
      June 30, 2019

      I've been able to bypass this issue by mounting OS volume as writable (which is read-only in Catalina) using "mount -uw /" command in Terminal. Works until restart, after that it will become read-only again and you have to remount it again.

        W
        wilsonhomemac
        Participant
        July 4, 2019

        I needed "sudo mount -uw /". 

        Just an FYI.  Works fine after that.  Thanks. 

          B
          BillAU
          Participant
          July 4, 2019

          Thanks Wilson. This solved it.

          Johan, this is how you answer a question. Or perhaps you actually don't know what you are talking about?

            JohanElzenga
            Community Expert
            JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
            Community Expert
            June 29, 2019

            These are known issues, that no doubt will be fixed by the time MacOS 10.15 is officially released. Don’t use beta software if you need to do some real work.

            -- Johan W. Elzenga
            H
            HaydenMeadeAuthor
            Participant
            June 29, 2019

            Thanks for the help

            Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
            Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices