When trying to import in Lightroom Classic, "move" and "add" buttons are greyed out

[vwinklaar]

Hi,

 I have noticed that when trying to import in Lightroom Classic from my Sandisk Extrem Pro, the "move" and "add" buttons are greyed out. This is not the case if I try to do the same form a Western Digital exterenal hard disk.

I am using a Macbook Pro M1 and I also ran the disk utility on the Extreme Pro to check for errors but found none.

Both Lightroom Classic and Photoshop have full access. Running the latest versions.

I also see that the Extreme Pro appears under "devices" in the import menu but not the WD external drive. They both appear under "Files" in the import menu.

Anyone can have an idea on why this is happening or what am I doing wrong?

Thank you.

[JohanElzenga]

Sometimes MacOS sees a portable drive as a memory card. If that happens, Lightroom will not offer 'move' or 'add' because it never offers that for memory cards. Formatting the Extreme Pro in APFS (if you have not done that yet) may help MacOS seeing it as a disk. Also make sure there is no folder called 'DICM' at the root of the drive.

[vwinklaar]

Yes Maybe that could be the reason. The Sandisk is formatted as EXFAT.

[JohanElzenga]

Yes Maybe that could be the reason. The Sandisk is formatted as EXFAT.

By @vwinklaar

Unless you need that for cross platform reasons, it is always better to format your drives in APFS if you work on a Mac.

[DdeGannes]

Those options are grey due to the following, 

Add is not an option because the images will remain on the card and will not be accessible to LrC when the card is disconnected.

Move is not an option since it will delete the images from the card. Adobe's position is to not allow that option as they believe the risk of the loss of the original image due to the failure of the move i.e. no option to retrieve from the card.

After you are satisfied the Copy option completed successfully you can use your Camera to remove the images from the card or format the card.

[vwinklaar]

Thank you for your reply, I did not specify corectly that the Sandisk Extreme Pro is the 2TB solid state drive (External Hard Drive), not the card that you put in the camera.

[JohanElzenga]

Thank you for your reply, I did not specify corectly that the Sandisk Extreme Pro is the 2TB solid state drive (External Hard Drive), not the card that you put in the camera.

By @vwinklaar

As explained, sometimes MacOS still sees it as a memory card and then Lightroom will as well.