In addition to resetting preferences and sharing a sample .nef copied directly off the card, I have a couple more low-probability guesses:
- Google archaeology doesn't suggest much,
except one person who said in a thread with Jim that "Preview unavailable" in the Import window went away after doing Preferences > Performance > Camera Raw Cache Settings > Purge Cache. For good measure, make sure the cache is at least 5 GB too.
- Maybe your Mac OS is getting confused and thinking your card reader is a camera-like device using the outdated (and buggy) Picture Transfer Protocol. When you insert the card and start LR, do you see the Devices section at the top of the left column in the Import window?
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- Earlier versions of Mac OS (10.13 and earlier) appeared to have required
a Sony driver to be installed for its XQD readers. But recent versions of Mac OS seem to have the driver built-in and the new reader you purchased says " no driver" on the Amazon product page. But I'm wondering if you had installed the driver years ago and it's still installed, confusing Mac OS 11. You could try doing
a clean install of Mac OS, but this requires reformatting your drive and restoring your apps and documents, so it's a heavyweight and potentially nerve-wracking process.