Trouble using iphoto on external drive

Hi,
I have an i photo library on a WD My Passport external drive and am having trouble getting photos off of the drive. When I select he photos I'd like to export, where I 'd like them to go, and hit okay, I get an error message that says: Unable to create/... what can I do to get photos of the drive?
any thoughts?
thanks

Couple of questions:
What format is the external drive?
Select one of the affected photos in the iPhoto Window and right click on it. From the resulting menu select 'Show File (or 'Show Original File' if that's available). A Finder Window should open with the file selected. Does it?
Regards
TD

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Trouble using iphoto on external drive

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