How to restore catalog to hard drive that has multiple catalogs

Question

I recently had to have my operating system restored. After this was done, I restored my current catalog to my Z drive. I have a different hard drive on my computer (the D drive) that has the photos from 5 different catalogs on it (Catalogs 2 through 6). The photos in those catalogs are still on my D drive (they weren't affected by the operating system restore). I now need to restore those 5 catalogs from an external hard drive. I tried to restore Catalog 2 just now by directing the restoration to Catalog 2 instead of to the D drive. I got a message saying that there are already files from that catalog present, and I clicked on the box that said I wanted to include those files. After I did that, it said that ONE file was already on that catalog. If I proceed with the restoration, will it restore ALL the photos present in Catalog 2? Or does that mean it only recognizes one photo? I cancelled the restore because I wasn't sure.

So, should I direct the restore to the entire D drive that has 5 different catalogs in it, or just to the catalog I'm restoring (Catalog 2)?

I am using Windows 10.

Darlene Fr · Answer

I would like to reply to my own post. I talked to two different Adobe tech support people today. The first one helped me by showing me how to restore one of my catalogs. But about 20 minutes after I hung up with him, the restore process froze at 51%. I had to shut down the computer to unfreeze everything. I then called back and got a fantastic tech named Ajay, who had helped me with another problem a few months ago. One of the techs back then (I don't remember if it was Ajay or another tech) had recommended I back up the Catalogs folder on my C drive before Dell reinstalled my operating system, and am I ever glad I did! Since my photos were still on my hard drive, and because I had backed up the Catalogs folder to an external hard drive, Ajay was able to show me a super-fast way to restore my catalogs. Because of him, I was able to restore all 10 of my catalogs (about 10 TB in all) in about 10 minutes! Had I tried to restore them the usual way, it would have taken me weeks to do it! I am enormously grateful to Ajay for taking the time to walk me through the procedure. He also recommended I backup the Catalogs folder to an external hard drive every 2 weeks in case something like this happens again.

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