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Participant
February 20, 2019
Question

Elements Organizer 19 backup "drive does not contain a valid backup"

  • February 20, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 1228 views

Elements 2019 installed on old and new Mac, current OS installed. Did optimize then full catalog backup from old Mac to removable drive. Message said backup complete. Unmounted and moved drive to new Mac, selected the location of backup just completed, tried to restore backup (tried both with and without selecting restore original file structure) and get the message "drive does not contain a valid backup." Really no idea what to do next.

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1 reply

Participating Frequently
March 15, 2019

I have the same basic problem. When I use finder to look in the backup directory I can see the Backup.tly file. But when I try to do a restore from within PSE it cannot see the file. It's acting like the permissions on the file are the problem.

Participating Frequently
March 16, 2019

As a follow-up, my original backup was a folder containing over 136K files. Thinking that the MS Windows may have done something funky for a directory that large I backed up a catalog containing only a few thousand items. This restored onto the MAC just fine. I then went back to the other backup and selected the Backup.tly file and this time the restore worked fine. Go figure...

Participating Frequently
November 12, 2019

Thank you so much! While I would think the program would AUTOMATICALLY locate the .tly file, it does not. So once I scrolled down past the photos to the bottom of the external database, I found the "tally" file, selected it, and it worked. Thank you!