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ryano31716459
ryano31716459
Participating Frequently
November 9, 2016
Question

Save for Web suddenly not working on external drive, Adobe Photoshop CC

  • November 9, 2016
  • 3 replies
  • 1368 views

Hey all, I've searched through a bunch of forum posts and tried several solutions, but I am receiving the below error when I try to do a standard Save for Web jpg. I'm on Windows 10.

"Could not write file. An unknown error has occurred."

I use this function every day, and it stopped working while I was in the middle of a task. I had used it a few hundred times and then, all of a sudden, I start getting this error.

I've already tried...

* Deleting all Save for Web preference files

* Starting Photoshop with Ctrl+Alt+Shift and resetting preferences

* Resetting preferences within Photoshop itself

* Changing all folders on my drive to read/write

What's odd is that I am able to use Save for Web if I'm saving to my main C drive. It stopped working on my external drive only.

This is where I save all my images when I'm working, and I've done it countless thousands of times daily for a long time, with no problem. This is why I also checked the read/write settings on my drive folders.

I'm totally stuck right now and have tried everything I can find on the forums or other help sites. Nothing seems to be working. Any help getting this fixed would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

mytaxsite
mytaxsite
Inspiring
November 10, 2016

What's odd is that I am able to use Save for Web if I'm saving to my main C drive. It stopped working on my external drive only.

Have you tried inserting another drive to see if it works.  Insert a flash drive and then save on it to test this.

ryano31716459
ryano31716459Author
Participating Frequently
November 11, 2016

Thanks for the insight. As previously noted, I did try it on a USB thumb drive and it worked fine. I would say I think it's a hard drive issue, but I can't imagine anything drive-specific that would prevent me from using Save For Web but allow me to use everything else, Photoshop or otherwise. Editing/regular saving works just fine, too.

mytaxsite
mytaxsite
Inspiring
November 11, 2016

ryano31716459 wrote:

Thanks for the insight. As previously noted, I did try it on a USB thumb drive and it worked fine. I would say I think it's a hard drive issue, but I can't imagine anything drive-specific that would prevent me from using Save For Web but allow me to use everything else, Photoshop or otherwise. Editing/regular saving works just fine, too.

Just to clarify one thing, can you confirm that you are using 64 bit Operating system and Photoshop CC is also 64 bit?  Also, please confirm that is the old CC version of Photoshop and not 2015.5 or 2017.  You've just said Photoshop CC which I think came in 32 bit and 64 bit versions.  So these basic info might help to pin-point the root cause of the problem.

I assume you can use the drive from Windows explorer and also save any files from Office or even notepad or wordpad or any other applications.

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Nancy OSheaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 9, 2016

If it's a small USB flash drive, maybe you haven't got enough room left on the drive.  Or as happened to me a few days ago, the drive developed errors and needed to be scanned and repaired before I could use it again.

Nancy O.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
ryano31716459
ryano31716459Author
Participating Frequently
November 10, 2016

Thanks for the reply, Nancy. It's a 2TB external drive with over 1TB free. Definitely not the issue. I'll try the scan, but like I said above, I have never had issues and still don't have issues outside of the Save For Web error.

JJMack
Community Expert
JJMackCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 9, 2016

Check your user ID file system permission for your external disk. and folders.

JJMack
ryano31716459
ryano31716459Author
Participating Frequently
November 10, 2016

Hey, thanks for the reply. I checked all the file permissions that I can see for the external drive, and everything is set normally. There is no security tab in properties - image attached - so I'm not able to go through that part on the external drive folders. I also downloaded TakeOwnershipEx to try it that way, but I'm still getting the same error in Photoshop.

Even if I uncheck the "read only" box, it just reverts back to that. I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean anyway since I have zero problems moving, saving, editing, etc. files here. It's only Save For Web that's a problem.

I have not changed anything in Photoshop or on my drive. I've been doing this for a long time on various drives, specifically about 6 months on this drive. Never had an issue, never messed with settings, never changed anything. Save For Web literally stopped working while I was using it, and I had already saved hundreds of images on this particular day. It just...started giving me the error.

I'm so frustrated at this point and it's killing my workflow. Agh!

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Nancy OSheaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 10, 2016

Can you Save to your primary hard drive first and move that to your external?

Nancy O.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
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