Running an incremental backup in PSE 2024

Question

I have a number of questions regarding backup of my photo archive. I run PSE 2024 under Window 10/11 and want to make sure my photo archive is secure.
 
1. If I do a full incremental backup does this include everything in the Catalogue backup making the latter unnecessary or do they complement one another?
2. I ran a full backup to a USB memory stick followed by an incremental backup. I expected the incremental backup to be added to my initial full backup but it was placed outside that folder!
 
E:\Pictures\Photoshop_Catalogue_Backup
                   \Master_Full_Backup (folder)
                                 \Backup.tly     (files)
                   \incremental files were saved here along with subsequent incremental files.
 
Running my next incremental backup the new files seemed to be added to the previous incremental files (outside the initial full backup folder). Is this correct or have I missed something?
3. I now have two Backup.tly files, one in the master folder and one at the end of the incremental files list in the Photoshop_Catalogue_Backup folder. Which one should I reference when chosing my next incremental backup?
3. My images are on average 1-3 Mb in size, however the jpeg backup files are much smaller ~ 100-170 Kb
Then there are .json files (1 Kb) and .xmp files (10Kb) - what are they for?
 
I would be most grateful if someone could enlighten me regarding these questions. A lot of work has been put into compiling my archive and I need it to be safe and secure.
 
John McWilliam
 
[PII removed by moderator]

MichelBParis · Answer

An incremental backup is generally used in the hope to save time in the backup and restore process, which can be very long with the organizer. The backup process is specific to PSE because its purpose is to get a backup of both the media files and the catalog. A full backup creates a new backup folder which you have to create yourself, ideally on an external drive. No default location, that's up to you. It's the same for an incremental backup with a full backup as you have done. Each following incremental backup also requires a new backup folder of the same structure. That means that you should NEVER store the data of an incremental backup inside the folder of the full backup ; that would automatically spoil the present data in the catalog and make them useless.

You must create and name the backup folder yourself so that you can perform an incremental restore following the instructions in the required order.

There is no official technical data about the restore workflow and it's not intuitive. As it requires understanding the structure of :

- catalogs folders

- backup folders,

the huge risk is to create a set of one full plus many incremental backups that wont work.

The main reason why the very old incremental backup is practically no longer used is that it's not a time saving process.

Its main advantage is to be able to restore your media and catalog precisely at the time of any incremental backup, thus saving disk space.

My advice: if your full backup can be performed as a night job, only use full backups.

Don't forget that for saving incrementally your media files there are many free or affordable solutions.

For saving the catalogs only, use the automatic catalog structure feature present in the recent PSE versions.

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