Participant

Question

Moving PSE Manually to New Computer

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
June 24, 2025
2 replies
183 views

Hi All:

I had a severe laptop failure recently, I was able to remove the hard drive fortunately and I have access to it.

I have a new laptop and intened on installing PSE fresh.

I wish to use my old catalog file that I can retrieve from the old drive. It's not a 'backup' file, but the actual catalog file. I was never able to backup the catalog before my old laptop fried.

Anyway, my first go-round, I installed PSE on the new machine and before opening it, copied my old catalog file to the new proper location. It opened fine, but all my files show 'offline' and I am having trouble pointing PSE to the new location for the files (library). They were previously located on a shared network drive. The library is now located on a usb attached directly to my laptop.

No matter what I try, PSE wont let me update to the new library, it still shows files as 'offline' I have tried to 'reconnect all missing files' and it says it doesnt find any.

In looking at the reveal info, files still point to the old network drive.

Im able to set my new watch folder to the new usb drive but I cannot get PSE to point to the new files.

Is there a recommended way to reconnect them to the new location? Thanks, Jeff

Greg_S.

Community Expert

Congratulations on getting it working! Based on my understanding of what you have done, you have completed the task. I tried modifying the drive serial number itself when I copied/cloned my media to a new drive, and I ran into all kinds of problems.

As a matter of curiosity, what SQLite editor did you use?

JAPierceAuthor

Participant

Thanks Greg, I used DB Browser SQ Lite to get the job done.

JAPierceAuthor

Participant

Sorry, also this is PSE 2020

ok what I've done so far is from my old accesible hard drive from the fried laptop, copy the contents of my \ProgramData\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs\PSE Master Catalog and I placed that in my new install folder in the same location (without opening Elements yet)

Then I modified the old catalog's volume_table (now in place in the new install location) to update it to the new source location for the files (in this case F:\ which is a USB drive plugged directly into my pc)

I modified these values:

description: F:\ serial: F\ drive_path_if_bultin: F:\ type: network_drive

Then I launched elements organizer.

The organizer lists all my media, and none of them show offline. If I do a file info on a pic, it points tot he right location on F:\

What its not showing is under each folder in the tree, the individual files on those folder, it only correctly shows ALL MEDIA. If I click on a folder in the tree, nothing. the message is: No Media available. Please clear filter applied and try again.

Are there additional tables I need to modify in the database to poulate each folder in the tree?

Thanks in advance, making progress!

JAPierceAuthor

Participant

OK Update:

It looks like I may be stumbling onto fixing this as it now seems to be working!!

I close the organizer and further updated my volume_table in the catalog to the following:

Description: F:

serial: 673732262 (converted to decimanl from the hex value of my drive)

drive_path_if_builtin: F:

type: removable_drive

see here:

and now all photos are in their proper place in the folders in the tree. Viola!

I reset my watch folder to F: and tested it and it works brining in new pictures in the right folders in the tree.

All my people tags are also there (assuming because I copied the entire /PSE Master Catalog folder over from the old fried laptop drive).

Is there anything else I need to consider? Any other tables in the catalog to update? I want to make sure I get everything.

I hope this process helps someone who wasnt able to restore their catalog from a backup, as this seems to work.

Jeff

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