iPhotos appear locked - something's going on!!

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Level 1

34 points

iPhotos appear locked - something's going on!!

I accessed my external HD last night, connected to my MBP, and was happily editing/renaming/deleting various photos therein.

This morning I re-connected the HD to continue but could not see the HD either in Finder or Disk Utility.

I connected it to my iMac desktop and it appeared as exp[ected but was accompanied by a message saying it could not be edited or some such information**.

I reconnected it to my MBP and left it flashing for a considerable half an hour. When it appeared to have a steady power light I checked and it had then appeared in Finder and DU.

However, the photos on the HD appear locked and I can neither rename them as required nor delete those I no longer want. I have checked the "Get Info" on individual photos but the 'Locked' box is not ticked and is greyed out anyway.

I wanted to try it in my iMac once again to reproduce the earlier message** but I can't eject the HD from my MBP either; I do have the option of Force Eject but don't want to action that yet until I know more about the issue.

Any ideas would be gratefully received. (Don't wish to risk losing the content as most of my photos are backed top to this HD)

MacBook Pro 14″

Posted on Sep 30, 2025 4:40 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,834 points

Sep 30, 2025 5:54 AM in response to PaulSG

Get another disk and make a back up. That's first and foremost.
What format is the disk? It needs to be formatted Mac OS X Extended, Journaled or apfs.

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Answer 2

Sep 30, 2025 7:43 AM in response to PaulSG

You don't say what macOS you're are using on either of your Macs. That can make quite a difference. For instance, a Photos Library cannot work on two different versions. If a Photos Library is connected to a newer version, then it can't ever be opened by an older version of Photos.

Yer_Man suggested that the format of the disk drive may be the problem. In older macOSs, improperly formatted drives could be opened, but they could cause corruption so, again, the OS version matters.

Also as Yer_Man says, you need to back up this drive before you add to any additional corruption.

We've seen a report (from léonie) that some drives respond differently to different OS, as well.

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Answer 3

Sep 30, 2025 9:31 AM in response to PaulSG

An APSF container can have lots of volumes. Here's one of mine:

This one disk has 6 independent volumes (backups of old smaller HHDs.) On my Mac's sidebar it looks like this:

Each volume looks like a separate drive. The info window for one of them looks like this:

Indicating it's a volume on an APFS drive. An advantage to APFS is that the volumes can be variable in size.

I haven't experienced this but, as I said, léonie, an expert, has said

Some of my older external drives could not be mounted only Mac with Sequoia, but I could still use them on my older Macs with macOS 10.14 Mojave.

If this is the problem, then you may need to format a drive in Sequoia, plug it in to High Sierra, and copy stuff over. I guess.

And report this as a bug:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

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Answer 4

Old Toad

Level 10

215,196 points

Sep 30, 2025 9:33 AM in response to PaulSG

How is the external drive connected to your MBP?

Is it a self powered drive?

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Answer 5

PaulSG Author

Level 1

34 points

Sep 30, 2025 8:57 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

MBP = Sequoia 15.6.1

Old iMac = High Sierra 10.3.6 - However, I was only using this to check if the connecting lead was ok which , being so old, I presume explains the message I received when I highlighted the HD (shown below).

The format of the HD is Mac OS Extended and Disk Utility shows it to be Type: "USB External Physical Volume" and I'm getting the message when I try to eject it that it's in use - but I can't see where!!

Disk Utility shows the SECOND HD to be Type: "APFS Container" and not showing the actual name of the hard drive.I haven tried to substitute connecting another external HD but, even after waiting a considerable time, that too is not now showing up.

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Answer 6

PaulSG Author

Level 1

34 points

Sep 30, 2025 9:25 AM in response to PaulSG

MBP = Sequoia 15.6.1

Old iMac = High Sierra 10.3.6 - However, I was only using this to check if the connecting lead was ok which , being so old, I presume explains the message I received when I highlighted the HD (shown below).

The format of the HD is Mac OS Extended and Disk Utility shows it to be Type: "USB External Physical Volume" and I'm getting the message when I try to eject it that it's in use - but I can't see where!!

Disk Utility shows the SECOND HD to be Type: "APFS Container" and not showing the actual name of the hard drive.

I have tried to substitute connecting another external HD but, even after waiting a considerable time, that too is not now showing up.

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Answer 7

PaulSG Author

Level 1

34 points

Sep 30, 2025 9:33 AM in response to PaulSG

The substitute external HD is now showing up in DU but, again, is titled as a "APFS Container disk".

Just a thought - for the additional external drives I have used which are showing up as "APFS Containers" I have used the ThunderBolt port on the Right side of the MBP - shouldn't be any different to the TB ports on the Left should it? (Can't connect the additional HDs to the second TB port on the Left as the USB/TB adaptors are too big to fit side by side).

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Answer 8

PaulSG Author

Level 1

34 points

Oct 3, 2025 8:56 AM in response to PaulSG

Another issue I have spotted - coincident with the above issues - is the fact that I can no longer appear to move a file into a folder in Finder!! Very Strange. Not sure if it's linked or merely coincident but it has only occurred since the above issues.

[Edited by Moderator]

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