Unable to access photos on external drive

I have Aperture 2.1.3 and I have been using Photo Mechanic to quickly import, edit, and save my photos to one of my external drives. I have been using Aperture to adjust some of these images by importing them into Aperture but the stored files have remained on the external drive. Suddenly, when I try to import the photos from external drive for Aperture manipulation the photos are not available for import. But the photos are viable on my external drive, and If I use Photoshop or Photo Mechanic, I CAN access and import these same files .
I hope this makes sense! I need advise!
thanks to all!
Tony P
Radical Sports Photos

.plist is the preference file. Go to your User/Library/Preferences and take com.apple.Aperture.plist (the preferences are in alphabetical order) and put the file on your desktop. Then restart Aperture. Aperture will return to its default settings and there will be a new preference file in the Library/Preferences folder.
If this clears your problem, then your old plist file was corrupt and you should put it in the trash and rebuild your own preferences.
If you still have the problem after restarting Aperture, then it's not the plist file, and you can trash the new plist and restore your old one from the Desktop back into the Library/Preferences folder.
Have you tried to reboot the machine. Sometimes things go wrong in the connection with an external drive and rebooting the machine clears the problem. You could also reset the PRAM (on boot, hold down Command-Option-P-R and wait for the second chime). Sometimes the PRAM gets corrupted and this affects the relationship with external drives.
You could also import the RAW files into Aperture, instead of using them as referenced files.

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