iPhoto Unable to Export to External Drive

Hello all.

Good afternoon. I am trying to export my iPhoto pictures to an external hard drive. However when I perform this function, it is giving me this error message:

Unable to create volume/passport/...

The external hard drive has over 200+ GB of remaining disk space; and the number of pictures being exported is 170 with an average size of 4MB per picture.

Any suggestions of what is happening will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.


Babylon5

How is that drive formatted? If it is NTFS, OS X cannot write to it without the help of 3rd party drivers.

@ lifeisabeach: The drive's format is MS-DOS (FAT32). Also the export stopped after 12 files were successfully saved to the external hard drive.

babylon5 said:

@ lifeisabeach: The drive's format is MS-DOS (FAT32). Also the export stopped after 12 files were successfully saved to the external hard drive.

Click to expand...

Hmmmm. Well the drive could be failing. It also could be any number of potential problems with the file system (FAT32). The first thing I'd do is verify the disk. You can do this wth Disk Utility or download Onyx and use that. For more extensive drive testing and volume repairing, Disk Warrior is one of the best.

If the drive checks out, consider reformatting the drive. Are you using FAT32 for compatibility with a Windows PC? If not, and it's only for a Mac, then by all means reformat it using HFS+.

lifeisabeach said:

Hmmmm. Well the drive could be failing. It also could be any number of potential problems with the file system (FAT32). The first thing I'd do is verify the disk. You can do this wth Disk Utility or download Onyx and use that. For more extensive drive testing and volume repairing, Disk Warrior is one of the best.

If the drive checks out, consider reformatting the drive. Are you using FAT32 for compatibility with a Windows PC? If not, and it's only for a Mac, then by all means reformat it using HFS+.

Click to expand...

I tried using the iPhoto export function and save the photos to a folder in the Macintosh HD; and the same thing happened where the export process stopped after certain number of files are saved.

Now I am dumbfounded.

babylon5 said:

I tried using the iPhoto export function and save the photos to a folder in the Macintosh HD; and the same thing happened where the export process stopped after certain number of files are saved.

Now I am dumbfounded.

Click to expand...

With the FAT32 drive, the discussion linked below mentions that there is a limit to how many files can reside in the root directory. That may be your problem. Also, especially as for the Mac HD, is it possible some of the photos have the same name? See this discussion for more info:
Apple - Support - Discussions - Unable to create volume - error message ...

@lifeisabeach - Found the issue; and it has something to do with the actual file not existing even though the thumbnail indicates that the file does exist. This is the reason why this message was appearing. Thank you so much for your help.

babylon5 said:

@lifeisabeach - Found the issue; and it has something to do with the actual file not existing even though the thumbnail indicates that the file does exist. This is the reason why this message was appearing. Thank you so much for your help.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the update. That info most certainly will come in handy here one day, I'm sure.