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Pse organizer imports with wrong drive

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
December 17, 2022
4 replies
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I am using a Mac with Photoshop elements 2023. I have two external drives. I Import files from Drive 2. They import fine, but when I want to use one, it is disconnected. When I display the information it says that the file is on Drive 1. I have created new catalogs and started from scratch several times. It is always the same. None of the files are located on Drive 1. Everything is on drive 2. I get media from drive 2 and it imports and the file information says it's on drive 1. I can't reconnect the files even if I browse to the location.

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Correct answer Debbie227414391i81

I contacted Adobe. Their response was to not use any external drives. That is not a practical solution for me.

However, I reached out also to SanDisk - the maker of my external drives. They asked me for my specifics including the file system of the drives. (ExFat). That prompted me to try to re-format my 2 drives (a 2 day process to backup, re-format, restore) to APFS. All appears to be working well now. Thanks for your help.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

Debbie, I'm sorry that Adobe Support gave you that useless advice. It would not be helpful for anyone.

Thanks for reporting the solution you found.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

@Debbie227414391i81 , you can try contacting Elements support. You can start a chat session by clicking on the blue Contact Us button under the Help & Support menu at Adobe.com. Or you can contact Support by telephone using the numbers listed here: https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/phone.html. Hours of operation outside of the United States are limited. See the phone link for details.

D

Debbie227414391i81AuthorCorrect answer

Participant

I contacted Adobe. Their response was to not use any external drives. That is not a practical solution for me.

However, I reached out also to SanDisk - the maker of my external drives. They asked me for my specifics including the file system of the drives. (ExFat). That prompted me to try to re-format my 2 drives (a 2 day process to backup, re-format, restore) to APFS. All appears to be working well now. Thanks for your help.

Abambo

Community Expert

I contacted Adobe. Their response was to not use any external drives. That is not a practical solution for me.

By @Debbie227414391i81

That's a nonsense answer from Adobe support. Data can and should reside on external disks. However, how that external disk is connected to the computer (logical connection by the OS, not the physical connection) is important.

I also have no idea how that happens on a macOS computer, so I won't speculate on this. However, Windows uses drive letters, and those drive letters may change, and that may cause problems as the data location has changed then. This can be avoided, by paying attention to this and by forcing drive letters counting down (z-y-x-...), by making sure that no two drives get the same letter.

For a macOS system, where the underlying OS is UNIX, I would guess that there are mounting points somewhere, that can be “forced” and should not change for a specific disk.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

Greg_S.

Community Expert

@Jeff Arola can you shed any Mac light on this problem?

Greg_S.

Community Expert

I know nothing about Macs, but I have seen the same situation exist on Windows, particularly where the two external drives are the same brand and model. As I understand it, the Organizer uses the Volume ID number to identify where files are stored. Although these IDs are supposed to be unique, there are situations where they can be the same, e.g. cloning the drive. In such a case, the Organizer seems to identify only one of the drives as the active drive and although files can be imported from the second drive, the catalog will associate the file with the first drive. The drive volume ID can be changed with a DOS command or some utilities that are available for Windows. I have no idea whether the same situation applies to the Mac OS but it may be worth exploring.

I will ping @MichelBParis who knows more about this than I do, at least on the Windows side, to see if he can offer any other insight.

MichelBParis

Legend

Hi @Debbie227414391i81

I am a Windows only user, so I am in the same situation as Greg.

Since Mac versions appeared a few years after the Windows one, I suppose that the logic for referencing disks (volumes) in Macs tries to mimic the Windows way. That may create similar problem as yours. The internal logic of both operating systems is different, that's all I know. Similar problems are relatively frequent with Windows, but it's the first time I am seeing this in the Elements forum for a Mac.

What would be interesting for us, Win users, would be to ask an advanced Mac user to use an Sqlite browser to create a screenshot of the 'volume_table' of your catalog database (catalog.pse21db)

Here is the structure of that table in Windows.

D

Debbie227414391i81Author

Participant

Thanks Greg & Michel. Your explanations seem quite plausable since these 2 external drives are the identical make, model & size. I'm not an advanced Mac user so I don't know how to use sqlite, but I did go into the Mac disk utility and gathered this information (show in picture). Here the File system UUID's are unique and the disk numbers are also unique. So, I'm wondering what PSE organizer uses as a disk identifier?

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