Participating Frequently

Question

Restore PSE14 backup my catalog without duplicating data?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
January 28, 2023
4 replies
554 views

I just had to reinstall PSE14 on my PC after getting a new C drive SSD. My photographs are still on the same D data HDD. I made a backup before the change. How do I restore my catalog without duplicating my data on D?

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Greg_S.

Community Expert

Hmmm. Perhaps, next time, make sure all of your external drives are connected before performing the Restore process. Alternatively, if you have a backup of your catalog folder simply copy that to the new drive and you should be good-to-go.

M

Mark WoodfinAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi
I'm in the process of trying that. I had all the external drives connected before opening PSE14. It is still going but it is presently making new copies of those external drives and the images in them onto C again. C now half full like before. What did you mean by copyinh a backup of the catalog folder?

M

Mark WoodfinAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi Greg,
The restore process did the same again and filled up the C drive. I had to delete all the folders it created there.
However I think I managed to fix the problem. I had copied my catalog folder to an external drive. When I copied the catalog.pse14db file back to C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs and reopened PSE14 the catalog was "recovered". This has fixed it even if I am not sure how. I have not found this solution anywhere in the community or Adobe help. I suggest it is the easiest way to get the catalog (index, not files) back in cases where the original images have not been moved or lost. But I would always make that full back-up first.
There are other files in C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs that were probably made during the failed "restore", like *.cache and the folders in the screenshot. PSE catalog might be needing these in order to work as well as the catalog.PSE14db file?
Regards,

Mark

Greg_S.

Community Expert

Are you sure that was not a temporary storage location?

M

Mark WoodfinAuthor

Participating Frequently

I'm not sure but it did fill the C drive completely and the backup did not complete. There was no catalog indexing in the organiser. It had taken 3 hours+ to do it so it was copying the files from backup.
I'm trying again now being very careful to restore to the original location. However therre wa a warning that new folders might be created.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

I'm not sure what it will do if the original location is not available. Hopefully, it will not matter because once the catalog database is restored, it will link to the files on your external drives when they are back on line.

The restoration can take several hours, particularly if you use face recognition as many small text files have to be copied to the new drive.

M

Mark WoodfinAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi,
It seems that restore did not go as planned. It attempted to restore ALL the photos on back-up to my new C drive SSD until it was filled; not good. It was writing to C:\Users\User\Pictures\Adobe\Photos from Backup\ and then recreating both an internal and the external drives there.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

Hi Mark. When you restore the catalog, choose to use Original Location in the restore to box:

For more details on the restore process, see this HelpX article.

M

Mark WoodfinAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks Greg.
I Clicked on restore to original location and the process started. It complained about the computer having changed and that there might be problems with some files but I clicked the ignore option. It asked if I wanted to duplicate the first image it found so I clicked no to all. I hope it will not overwrite or duplicate any images. It is proceeding with the restore but taking its time. To be fair there were 39,000 images in the catalog. Actually. I did not have all of the external drives attached so will it try to duplicate files on those drives somewhere else?
Cheers,

Mark

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