Lightroom Classic: Can't Import with "Add" from External Drive after Upgrade to MacOS Catalina

We are aware of this issue on macOS Catalina and logged a bug for the same.

I guess write permission is the problem.
One reason could be if your external disc is formatted with NTFS file system. Then your NTFS software may need upgrade.
The other reason may be security. Check that your user/Lightroom has write permission to the external drive.

The permissions on the Drive are read/right. I’m on a Mac. I don’t know where I would update any NTFS software. You said check that your user/Lightroom has right permissions. Where would I check that? User is one thing but lightroom is another.

“Write” permissions. System Prefs/Security-unlock lock, find Lightroom on left, make sure it has access to Files & Folders on right.

Forget NTFS, probably not it unless you also have a Windows drive.

That drive won't be formatted in NTFS, because the OP says that he copies the images from the memory card to that drive and MacOS X does not support writing to NTFS volumes. And if he has software that adds this support, then Lightroom should not have a problem with it either.

If Carlos' suggestion doesn't help, then another possibility is that Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina) could be misidentifying the drive as "removable" (like a USB flash drive). This has happened to a number of Mac and Windows users in the past.

To check this (and the NTFS possibility, which has also struck a few LR users in the past, and other possibilities), please do this:

1. In Finder, find the exact name of the drive in the left sidecar. 

2. Start Terminal, and execute this command:

diskutil info "drive"

where drive is the name from step 1. Be sure to wrap drive with double-quotes.

3. Copy and paste all the output from "diskutil" here.

(Don't use the Disk Utility for this, since in the past it elided some important information about removable drives.)

I wonder if Catalina is seeing this DUAL drive as something different from the previous OS. It's a dual drive and mounts as 1 drive.



   Device Identifier:         disk5

   Device Node:               /dev/disk5

   Whole:                     Yes

   Part of Whole:             disk5

   Device / Media Name:       WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0

   Volume Name:               THUNDER

   Mounted:                   Yes

   Mount Point:               /Volumes/THUNDER

   Content (IOContent):       Apple_HFS

   File System Personality:   Journaled HFS+

   Type (Bundle):             hfs

   Name (User Visible):       Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

   Journal:                   Journal size 524288 KB at offset 0x7472000

   Owners:                    Disabled

   OS Can Be Installed:       Yes

   Booter Disk:               disk3s3

   Media Type:                Generic

   Protocol:                  SATA

   SMART Status:              Verified

   Volume UUID:               DFD16DF8-C2E7-3268-A9E5-548041BA97A6

   Disk / Partition UUID:     DD47D19D-BA7D-422F-B096-A4199A830BAA

   Disk Size:                 8.0 TB (8000886079488 Bytes) (exactly 15626730624 512-Byte-Units)

   Device Block Size:         512 Bytes

   Volume Total Space:        8.0 TB (8000886079488 Bytes) (exactly 15626730624 512-Byte-Units)

   Volume Used Space:         7.4 TB (7393132658688 Bytes) (exactly 14439712224 512-Byte-Units) (92.4%)

   Volume Free Space:         607.8 GB (607753420800 Bytes) (exactly 1187018400 512-Byte-Units) (7.6%)

   Allocation Block Size:     8192 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:           No

   Read-Only Volume:          No

   Device Location:           External

   Removable Media:           Fixed

   Solid State:               No

   Virtual:                   Yes

   Hardware AES Support:      No

   This disk is a RAID Set.  RAID Set Information:

   Set Name:                  My Book Thunderbolt Duo

   RAID Set UUID:             DD47D19D-BA7D-422F-B096-A4199A830BAA

   Level Type:                Stripe

   Status:                    Online

   Chunk Count:               244167666

That output shows that Mac OS isn't mistakenly thinking the drive is removable.  It also shows the drive is not formatted as NTFS (though it comes out of the box that way from WD).  

"I wonder if Catalina is seeing this DUAL drive as something different from the previous OS. It's a dual drive and mounts as 1 drive."

It's currently configured as "striped", which means the two drives appear as a single drive (a single drive that's twice as big and twice as fast as one of the individual drives).

Did the Duo appear as two separate drives in 10.14?

And to verify our assumption: Since upgrading to 10.15, you've actually copied photos from your SD card to the Duo using Finder?

In the user-to-user forum, Adobe employee Smit Keniya wrote, "We are aware of this issue on macOS Catalina and logged a bug for the same.".

https://community.adobe.com/t5/Lightroom-Classic/Cant-select-add-while-importing/m-p/10717402#M16225...

No doubt at all it was upgrading to Catalina that launched this mess.   Same description of issue and negatively affecting my photography processing. 

Same problem here. Using a Mac Pro with QNAP NAS attached. NAS shares are mounted with SMB.

On going problem system wide.  Adobe needs to get on this or I'm going to find another platform...making a mess trying to process photography gigs. 

I received a reply on an issue related to "adding only" to my catalog.  The fix was adding the LR Classic application in privacy settings in 3 locations (Catalina) Accessibility, Full Disk Access, and Files and folders.  I worked once and now fails all the time.

@Mark: Have you gone back to those privacy settings to make sure that they remain correct?