Bridge & External Drive

[Moira]

Hi Brian. My Mac can see all the files on my external drives, but Bridge won't read them any more. Bridge can see the storage drive in the list of folders but when I click on it , in the filter section is says "building criteria" and I cannot see my images as tiles/thumbnails. It stays like this for ages. I am wondering if I have a wrong setting that I am not aware of. I have not had this problem before. The external drive is a 2TB drive and approx 50% full. I am running the latest versions of creative cloud and MacOS.

[Brian]

"Doesn't happen with Lightroom." LOL!!! Had to say it.

This is a common problem with Bridge and I've seen thread with this same problem go all the way back to the CS4 and CS5 days! I haven't found a true "Fix" just yet. From what I have found is you clear out Bridge's setup files.

Start Adobe Bridge and immediately press Command+Option+Shift until the Reset Settings Dialog Box appears. Select all three options:

• Reset Preferences
• Reset Standard Workspaces
• Purge Entire Thumbnail Cache

Then click OK. You can also check "Prefer thumbnail generation over preview generation" in Bridges' Preferences Section.

Here is the official fix from Adobe:

https://helpx.adobe.com/bridge/kb/bridge-cc-freezing.html

Basically, update to the latest version of Bridge. Then click on your Hard Drive, and let it sit at the "building criteria" box. Get up from your computer and go watch a long movie. One of the Lord of the Rings Movies should do it. Or click on it and go to sleep for the night. Hopefully when you wake up, Bridge will stop being stupid. 

There really isn't a fix for this. Sorry.

[Moira]

Thanks very much. 

[Moira]

I've been working on this since yesterday & finally found a solution which hopefully might help others. In the security & privacy settings for files & folders, Adobe Bridge 2021 , removable  volumes was unchecked. Once I checked this, Adobe Bridge 2021 was able to read the folders on my external drive.

[Brian]

10 hours ago, Moira said:

In the security & privacy settings for files & folders, Adobe Bridge 2021 , removable  volumes was unchecked.

Son-of-a-Bitch!!!

A HUGE FACEPALM on my part. I completely forgot about the Security & Privacy Settings!! We have had to click a few check-boxes in that module over the years to make the MacOS play nice with Adobe's products.

THANK YOU!!!