Lightroom 5 Transfer to new HD problems

Question

I recently had a HD failure but had my LR catelogue backed up on Time Machine.  Also all of my photos were on external HD. After slowly sorting through a number of problems transfering all of my back up documents I thought I was all sorted out.  I have been working in LR 5.  A number of photos, but not all,  have the "!" mark.  I seem to be able to work in the development module and export photos without difficulty.  Today was the first time I tried to import new photos into my "My Lightroom Photos" folder which sits on my external HD.  When I tried to import and add a new folder I was prompted "This location is read-only"  Next I looked on my computer HD under Pictures.  There I have a Lightroom folder with my catelogues.  Now I see the catelogues are grayed out. Is this normal? I have been able to back up my work when quiting LR.  I am concerned that the Time Machine backup was not copied correctly to my new HD.  This was the case with my documents.  I had to redue this action by first copying my documents to another ext. HD and then importing it to my new internal HD. 
Do you think this might be the same problem with the pictures folder? 
What do I do next?   

Answer 1

Debra, at least some of your issues relate to red/write permissions on that external drive
R-click on that drive and then select 'info'.
Then look for the read/write permissions.
What you will find is that you currently have read but not write privileges.
Change you account to have both read/write permission.
That should sort the import issue.
You do need to relink those images by R-clicking on them and then anvigating to the appropriate image.
It may be easier to relink the folders or whole hierarchies if the folders are also greyed out.
I am not sure what significance the greyed out catalog folders hold but I am yet learning the ins-and-outs of Mac OS.
Tony Jay