Premiere Pro errors on recognizing external harddrive

[CuccoLover]

Hi, I have a new Macbook Pro Silicon and I've always used an external harddrive for my video files that I use with Premiere Pro. In contrast to the Premiere programs at school I now have the latest version of Premiere 2022 thus installed on this new Mac for compatibility reasons. However, a big problem is now occuring that hasn't happened before when working with Premiere.

On the new Mac with this Premiere version, once importing the video files from my external harddrive into a Premiere project, it works just fine and I can work within the program editing everything. But, after closing the project and rebooting it, it won't relink the files.

When I try to then manually relink the files, it won't allow me search within my external harddrive despite it being shown as an option. In other words, I see my LaCie external harddrive but when I click on it nothing happens. It doesn't retrace the path, it's like it recognizes the external harddrive and yet it doesn't want to. It won't allow me to access it again through Premiere, despite having the files already linked before within this very harddrive and having worked with the files and none of the paths had ever changed. I can drag video files again into Premiere from my external harddrive still, but I'd have to manually replace every single file that I have already edited. The video files are far too large to put them all on my Mac. What can I do to solve this?

[RobShultz]

Is the school machine a Windows machine?

I'm wondering if your external hard drive isn't formatted for both Mac and Windows.

Exfat or Fat 32.

[CuccoLover]

No I won't use Windows at school. I use their iMacs and borrowed their Macbook Pro for weeks before to edit my videos. This problem never occured before. 

[CuccoLover]

Additionally, sorry for not mentioning it, but the LaCie external harddrive has the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - HFS+ formatting.

[Michael Grenadier]

Never seen this, never heard about this, but have one idea.  Make sure the external drive has read write permissions for you... Select the drive from the finder and control click and choose get info.  Make sure your user has read and write privileges and click on the gear wheel and choose "apply to enclosed items. It's possible you don't have permissions and you're set up to write xmp data to the media files in premiere: preferences: media.   And you can turn off the options to write xmp data to files on import and might as well turn off any of the other xmp options."    

..  This is just a long shot, but simple and quick to try.    

[CuccoLover · Accepted solution]

Thanks to this comment I had found the answer! It didn't have to do anything with the LaCie drive in particular because the privileges on the drive itself were already set to read and write. But then I realized it was indeed an access problem that Premiere didn't have and figured it was within the Mac itself.

For anyone who ever encounters this same problem, the issue is that Premiere needs certain permissions to be granted by your Mac in order to access external harddrives. In other words, I had to go into the Systempreferences > Privacy and Security > Privacy and then give full drive access to Premiere. Now this permission has been granted to Premiere it is no locked blocked from accessing my external drive and I can relink the footage again. Thank you for helping!

[Michael Grenadier]

thanks for posting your solution...   yeah, these new security measures on macs can be a royal pain, but you should see a warning from the macos...   when the mac asks these questions about access I always say yes...  

[CuccoLover]

I always click yes too, it usually asks for certain folders like Documents or Downloads but it has never has asked for my entire drive or external drives upon connecting or using it. In fact, in those very settings it was noticable that not a single program has full drive access, including the Mac's own Terminal... So it was weird, but manually settings the privacy for the programs at least work and probably also influence other programs that I have not used yet. In the end, I did not experience this on the other Macs because they did not run Monterey either, so it's probably a Monterey flaw.

[Michael Grenadier]

it's not a "flaw," it's a feature...

[JARMAN]

Sorry I figured it out, thank you.

[Michael Grenadier]

you might want to share your solution so others will be able to solve this issue...

[JARMAN]

How do you do this?  Give full drive access to Premiere.  

[Jeremy Regimbal]

System preferences - Security & Privacy - Click PRIVACY Tab at top - click "FULL DISK ACCESS" on the left (Click the lock to make changes) and then "+" to add the version of premiere Pro you want to add - then check the box beside it. 

[desergio54]

Do not click - , it will not work. Just add adobe

[default6kgf0wzpotrs]

Thank you! That worked. 

[cameronlockey]

Thank you! I agree, Premiere should at least display a warning or a message explaining why certain drives are not an option. I started a project on my Macintosh HD drive and ran out of space. But once I moved everything over to my external, I had this issue and restarted Premiere, it prompted me to locate my files but I couldn't select my drive.  Granting OSX this permission fixed my issue as well!

[Cali223700605grv]

Bravo! Thank you fo sharing! 

[QuintoYYC]

Bravo! A brilliant solution to a frustrating problem.

[jonathaneakin]

Wow unreal - FIXED! Thank you thank you thank you. 

[radiantkola]

You're a lifesaver! Many thanks for taking the time. 

[Mike and Paul24352911hat0]

O.M.G.!!! This saved my life. I can't believe it was that simple! Thank you for this!

[Gabrielle17347529tdsa]

Thank U so much for this ! This really helped!

[griccardi]

Hello! FYI I just fixed this issue by:

- Opening Finder window

- Right clicking on the drive that won't show up in Premiere Pro and selecting "Get Info"

- Clicking the lock icon to change permissions, even though they were all set to "read and write"

- Going to each visible user indivudially and changing each permission to "Read Only" and then back to "read and write".

This fixed it.... good luck!

Greg @ RiccardiMedia

[Michael Grenadier]

thanks for posting your solution.  Shouldn't be necessary, but whatever works...