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New external drive not showing in Lightroom on Mac

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C

Cornbread

New Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2025
Messages
2
Location
Phoenix, Arizona
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
14.5.1
Operating System
  1. macOS 15 Sequoia
I bought a new external drive and my Mac will mount it but it won't show in Lightroom. I have reformatted it to Exfat and when that didn't work, I formatted it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The permissions on the external drive are set to read/write. I can export and import from the new external drive but it won't show in Lightroom. I've have restarted multiple times with no success. Here are screen shots of what I see in Lightroom along with info on my new drive. Can you help?
Screenshot 2025-11-30 at 7.48.39 AM.png
Screenshot 2025-11-30 at 7.48.01 AM.png
 
Solution
Johan Elzenga
This is perfectly normal. Lightroom Classic is not a file browser. It only shows disks that have images on them that are imported. The disk will show once you have imported some images and stored these on the new disk.
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This is perfectly normal. Lightroom Classic is not a file browser. It only shows disks that have images on them that are imported. The disk will show once you have imported some images and stored these on the new disk.
 
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Solution
To add to Johan’s comments, When importing, if you want the images imported to that volume, you need to select it in the Destination panel of the import dialog.


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