Participant

Question

Recovering photos following disk crash

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
January 12, 2019
4 replies
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I'm sure its been asked previously and I simply need to be pointed to the thread.

I experienced a disk crash, although I have backups. Unfortunately the 30,000 photos have been backed up in different locations/media over the years. My catalog is good, although the photos are not in a single location. Is there Photoshop process/tool that will locate and reconnect the file associated with the catalog thumbnail and copy/move back to a single location?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

Elements doesn't care where your media files are located. If you have the backup on an external disk, then simply use the Restore utility to restore the entire catalog to whatever location you choose. If you only have one internal drive partition, then your C:\ . . . .\Pictures folder is as good a place as any.

I have a number of different drives and partitions on my machine and I prefer to keep the data off my system drive. If you are using a NAS drive or an external drive for your media, you will likely have some downgrade in performance, and it will also likely take far longer to restore your backup to those external locations.

One other word of caution with restoring the backup - if you select a custom location, you may find the backup files nested under the folder you expected to find it. In other words, it may end up in a Pictures\Pictures\ sub-folder.

C

charlesm36400167Author

Participant

Restore not responding.

I select Restore, click on browse and it hangs at the explorer. I've tried it several times and it always hangs. Looking at the task manager its doing I/O Reads, although the explorer window is frozen and I'm unable to choose a location. Any ideas?

Greg_S.

Community Expert

charlesm36400167 wrote
Restore not responding.
I select Restore, click on browse and it hangs at the explorer. I've tried it several times and it always hangs. Looking at the task manager its doing I/O Reads, although the explorer window is frozen and I'm unable to choose a location. Any ideas?

It's worth being a little more patient. There are many operations where the program reports being non-responsive, but will revive if you wait. If in fact the restore operation has found your backup file, it does take a long time to read it before anything happens. And depending on the size of your catalog, it can take a long time to restore - many hours.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

I understand that the catalog folder is good, but did you ever do a backup of the catalog using the Organizer's built-in utility. If so, that would be the best way to restore everything to a new drive. If that is not a possibility, then the relink process can be very slow. You can help the process along by browsing to the new file location yourself.

So, we still need more details about what you are trying to achieve. And give us some idea about what the original media folder setup was and how you want it to be on your new drive.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

It's not clear from your post whether you have a good catalog backup to restore. If you do, you are given the opportunity to restore the media files to a new location or whether you want to reproduce your old folder structure on a new disk.

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charlesm36400167Author

Participant

Hi Greg,

I believe the catalog is good on the new server. The total number of thumbnails within the catalog looks like all pictures have been accounted for. That said, when I try to edit a picture, it can not locate them and tries to reconnect.

MichelBParis

Legend

Greg is right to ask for a good catalog backup (from the organizer backup menu).

Let's summarize what we know and what we don't from your previous posts.

- I am pretty sure you did not do a catalog backup. You only have a number of copies of parts of your image files somewhere... we don't know where.

- If you can see the thumbnails in a catalog, that means the catalog itself (the catalog folder) is accessible. If you had a serious disk scratch, the catalog in default location would have been lost. So, the catalog folder must have been either in 'custom location' on another drive or partition, or you have found a folder copy somewhere. Where is your catalog folder? Menu Help >> File Information.

- You tell us the catalog is good on the 'new server'. Tell us more about where the original photo files where kept? If the catalog folder was in a 'server', does it mean you are using NAS drives?

The good new is that the catalog itself seems sound. It's possible to reconnect files even from different drives, but be prepared to a lot of work to recover everything. It you can manage to reconnect most files, even from various drives, you can consolidate the result in a new location by restoring a full backup into a new master folder of your choice.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

charlesm36400167

When you say 'Catalog' are you referring to Photoshop Elements or Lightroom perhaps? I'm just wondering if you are in the wrong forum? (we can move the thread if need be)

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charlesm36400167Author

Participant

Photoshop Elements 14

A

Anonymous

Moving to Photoshop Elements from Photoshop

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