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jmoritz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 10, 2019
5
0
Hi All,

I have saved my photos from an older work iPhone on an external LaCie Drive under a folder called iCloud Photos. The reason I did it was because they were all sitting in my professional iCloud account and wanted to move them to my personal iCloud account.

When I try to import them into my new MacBook from the external drive to add them to the Photos app, it only imports 3,000 out of the 14,000 photos/videos and says the photos couldn't be copied because you don't have permission to access.

I changed the permissions for the folder in the external drive but still get the message. Adding shots below to explicit the situation. Any help would be amazing!

bcf821bd-feb4-41f5-bcb8-5d40725eb566
3ff783b9-6bab-4701-92fd-5c6f12ae82a6
 
If you can already copy 3k out of 14k, the permissions problem isn't the containing folder it's the files themselves. If you do 'get info' on the drive itself do you see any checkbox option that says something like "ignore ownership on this drive"? If yes, try turning that on. If not you'll have to fix it through the terminal.
 
If you can already copy 3k out of 14k, the permissions problem isn't the containing folder it's the files themselves. If you do 'get info' on the drive itself do you see any checkbox option that says something like "ignore ownership on this drive"? If yes, try turning that on. If not you'll have to fix it through the terminal.

Thanks, the box was already checked, see below - I just changed everyone access from read to read and write, could that be it?

Screen Shot 2019-11-10 at 3.51.21 PM.png
 
Can you "manually copy" some of the "problem files" to a folder on the desktop, and then view them using a different applicaton?
 
"Managed to copy all the HEIC files for example"

Will Photos open them?
 
"Managed to copy all the HEIC files for example"

Will Photos open them?

Yes so I don't really get why but just copying the photos from the external drive to the Mac hard drive and then importing them to the photos app is working, thanks!
 
I encountered this issue today, and there is a easy fix, click on the setting icon at the permission section in the "info" window of that folder and click "apply to the enclosed items...". It works.
 
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