Import fails -- says Folder is "not writable or there is not enough free space"

[eschurr]

I just ran into a bizarre problem that may be a Windows 10 problem, but it only manifests itself during Lightroom import, so i'm thinking it's an LR problem.

I'm using LR CC -2015.12 (I am up to date with the latest update) on Windows 10 Pro V1703. I store all my photos on my external E: drive

My most recent Import attempts have failed with LR telling me "Folder is not writeable or there is not enough free space." But as the attached screen shots show, there is a ton of free space, and I was only attempting to import 20 pictures. I checked the security settings for the folder and for some reason they were set to read only, so i modified them for all users (the attached shows only one category of user selected but i made these settings for all four categories). I can copy a file from my C: drive to the E: My Pictures folder, so it seems the folder is not read-only. I restarted LR and my PC a few times with no luck.

I also created a doc in Word and was able to save it to the destination folder in E: My Pictures, so at least that app can write to the folder.

I did a bunch of reading about Windows 10 making folders read-only, but didn't find anything that helped.

I would sure appreciate some advice. LR isn't of much use if you can't import files!

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Check that Lightroom is not trying to make a second copy to a drive that doesn't exist.

 

[eschurr]

Check that Lightroom is not trying to make a second copy to a drive that doesn't exist.

Clever suggestion! i checked and that' s not the case. I also tried importing files to my C: drive and I get the same error message, so now i really think this is an LR issue (all kinds of apps are writing files to my C: drive. And the files I want to import are on my C: drive and i just put them there from Dropbox)

 

[clee01l]

Lightroom creates temporary files in the TMP folder (working storage) which is usually on C:. Check the free space on C: and you will find that it is low (probably less than 100GB). Likely you will need to free up space on the C: drive for LR and other apps to have enough working storage to do the job.

 

[Gnits]

Any possibility you are creating files or
Folders with illegal names.

I assume you are copying from card or other source to your destination.

 

[eschurr]

Lightroom creates temporary files in the TMP folder (working storage) which is usually on C:. Check the free space on C: and you will find that it is low (probably less than 100GB). Likely you will need to free up space on the C: drive for LR and other apps to have enough working storage to do the job.

thanks... there's 450gb left on C: That should be enough, eh?

 

[Hal P Anderson]

Any chance you could show us a screen shot of your Input dialogue?

 

[eschurr]

Any possibility you are creating files or
Folders with illegal names.

I assume you are copying from card or other source to your destination.

thanks. Initially i was trying to import from a folder on Dropbox and that failed. So i copied the files to my desktop and tried to import from there -- fail.

I don't think i'm creating any illegal names. I was retaining the original file names, but i tried another import in which i renamed the files -- fail.

I tried another experiment -- i shot some pics on my DSLR and tried to import from the SC card reader -- it worked!

So i manually copied the pics i wanted to import from the desktop to the destination folder on the E: and told LR to Synch that folder -- it worked!

I don't know what LR was complaining about earlier, but it looks like i may not have to worry about it anymore. Weird stuff. Thanks for you help.

 

[eschurr]

Any chance you could show us a screen shot of your Input dialogue?

Sure. Here it is. You may have seen in an earlier post that i worked around the issue, but here's my import dialog in case you want to see it.