Issues with saving documents to external drives on macOS Big Sur 11.5 (Fixed in macOS 11.6)

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2021-07-30 14:21:17

Hey everyone! A bit of an unusual announcement this time but we thought it was important to let you guys know about this. After the recent macOS Big Sur 11.5 update (released July 21, 2021), we’ve received a few reports from users having trouble opening files saved to their external drives. Right now, saving a PXD document to an external drive makes it lose its pixel information, while regular image files, like JPEG or PNG, fail to open completely. Our testing has shown that these issues are exclusive to the drives that use the ExFAT file system format. We have also noticed the same behavior on macOS Monterey 12 Beta.

We’ve notified Apple about this regression and are waiting for a solution at this time. In case of any updates — we'll post them in this thread. In the meantime, here are a couple of workarounds you can use to save files without them getting damaged:

1) Reformat your external drive to the macOS-native Mac OS Extended file system format. See Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac to learn how.
Important: For this workaround, make sure to backup files from your external drive first!

2) Roll back your macOS to the previous version — macOS Big Sur 11.4. You can use Time Machine for this.

If you come across any other solutions, feel free to share them below!
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2021-08-05 21:06:32

Thanks for the warning Aurelija!
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2021-08-19 07:21:36

by Tali 2021-08-05 18:06:32 Thanks for the warning Aurelija!
:pray:
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2021-08-19 14:30:57

One more workaround suggested by one of you guys — export files or save the PXD documents to Desktop first, then move them to the external drive. Seems to do the trick!
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2021-08-20 15:12:31

I just tried your last suggestion and it worked. I suppose we will have to wait for the next Big Sur update to see if they fix this problem.
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2021-08-24 07:29:53

by Pat Godin 2021-08-20 12:12:31 I just tried your last suggestion and it worked. I suppose we will have to wait for the next Big Sur update to see if they fix this problem.
Fingers crossed it'll have a fix. :fingers_crossed:
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2021-09-14 08:10:43

Good news everyone! macOS Big Sur 11.6 was just released and it seems to have this saving issue sorted out. If you haven't already, go grab the update and let us know if it helps.
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2021-09-28 18:10:07

Good afternoon. I have this problem. I can't open files from Google Drive. When I move them to my desktop, everything opens.
macOS Big Sur 11.6, MacBook Pro 16-inch
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2021-09-29 07:24:24

by sp0rtakus Good afternoon. I have this problem. I can't open files from Google Drive. When I move them to my desktop, everything opens.
macOS Big Sur 11.6, MacBook Pro 16-inch
Hi! This sounds like a slightly different issue. Are you using the web version of Google Drive or do you have it installed on your Mac as a location?
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2021-09-29 12:58:28

by Aurelija 2021-09-29 04:24:24
Hi! This sounds like a slightly different issue. Are you using the web version of Google Drive or do you have it installed on your Mac as a location?
Installed on my Mac as a location
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2021-09-29 15:38:09

by sp0rtakus 2021-09-29 09:58:28 Installed on my Mac as a location
Great — I have the same setup on my Mac, too. But I haven't noticed any issues opening PXDs from the Google Drive location. Are you seeing any alerts when opening files?
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2021-09-29 17:18:07

by Aurelija 2021-09-29 12:38:09
Great — I have the same setup on my Mac, too. But I haven't noticed any issues opening PXDs from the Google Drive location. Are you seeing any alerts when opening files?
No. Only the application icon in the dock jumps
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2021-10-04 08:25:00

by sp0rtakus 2021-09-29 14:18:07 No. Only the application icon in the dock jumps
I see. And have you checked whether opening regular images works in other Mac apps, such as Preview, for instance? For now, this very much seems like a Google Drive issue, potentially a connectivity-related one, so it might be a good idea to reach out to Google support about this and see if they have any ideas on troubleshooting this.