If you’re reading this, you probably don’t need any further explanation of the problem, but I’m going to give you a bit anyway, in the hopes that the words I use will help the search engines lead people experiencing the same problems to this simple solution.

I am currently running the latest 2021 version of the Adobe suite of products, on a new iMac Pro using OS Big Sur (11.0.1). I did not have this problem on my old laptop, which I recently decommissioned because it was so old it would not upgrade the OS and Adobe suite anymore. Therefore, I logic that the problem only comes about in more recent versions of either the Adobe apps or the OS. The basic response I found from Adobe online was: “We don’t support servers. Open the files from your local machine.” I get that, but it doesn’t really work with my established workflow, given the volume of files I need access to on a daily basis.

The problem: When trying to open a raw file that is located on a server, rather than on your local machine, you receive the following error: “Could not open {file name here} because of a disk error.” This happens when you double-click on the file and also when you try to open it through Photoshop or Bridge. My solution, prior to now, has been to drag the file(s) to my desktop and open them there, but that is inelegant and time-consuming.

The solution (if you have control over how your computer connects to a server): connect using AFP instead of SMB.

I know this seems a little anti-climactic and simple, and believe me I’ve been searching online for a solution for a while now. But it really is that simple – or at least that’s what fixed it for me. If you’re reading this, I hope it fixes it for you, too. I imagine it’s not likely a “forever” fix, but hopefully will last for a while ’til afp is fully decommissioned or Apple or Adobe figure out a way to break it in future upgrades.