Roon on MacBook Pro M1 not recognizing exFAT external hard drive (ref#1KXDI8)

[larryghopkins]

Hi! What’s not quite right with Roon?

· Music won’t play or issues with my library

Music won’t play or issues with my library

· Local files won't import or appear

Tell us what's going on

· Problem 1. I use a MacBook Pro with Apple M1 chip. Roon will not read my 16 TB external hard drive which is formatted exFAT. Roon only sees and plays music that is resident on my internal drive. The apple computer sees the external drive and all music files ( approx. 7 TB) but Roon does not. I also installed Roon on a windows PC and the drive read and populated Roon fine.

Tell us about your home network

· My router isTP-Link Deco BE11000 Wi-Fi 7 Tri-Band Whole-Home Mesh Wi-Fi System

[connor]

Hi @larryghopkins,

It sounds like you’re encountering a known discrepancy with network drive permissions in Apple and, fortunately, neither a problem with the drive nor your RoonServer.

Roon runs inside Apple’s sandboxing and permission model. External volumes are not automatically accessible to applications unless macOS explicitly grants access. You should just need to grant Roon access and then reboot:

1. Open System Settings
2. Go to Privacy & Security
3. Click Full Disk Access
4. Add Roon
5. Toggle it ON
6. Reboot the Mac

Then, re-add the network share in Roon Settings → Storage.

Please let us know if this helps.

[larryghopkins]

I did all that and no change. I identified the directory where my music is located and I get the message

“This directory appears to be empty. Add some files or edit this folder if it has been moved”

My Mac reads it just fine when I look at the drive. I have nearly 7000 albums on the drive so there is no shortage of files.

[connor]

Hi @larryghopkins,

You mentioned that you’d just mounted this drive from a PC. It’s possible that Windows left the drive in a “dirty” state from Roon’s perspective; the filesystem was likely left in a state that macOS can read at a basic level but that Roon cannot safely index. Finder will still show the folder structure and file counts, but Windows apply Windows-style permissions or alter directory metadata unless the drive is properly checked and cleanly ejected. When this happens, Roon can see the folder path but treats it as empty.

To resolve this, reconnect the drive to a Windows system and run a filesystem check using chkdsk (for example, open terminal and run:

chkdsk X: /f

Where X: /f is the drive location.

This clears the dirty flag and repairs minor filesystem inconsistencies. After the check completes, safely eject the drive from Windows, reconnect it to the Mac, and then re-scan the folder in Roon.

Let us know if this helps.