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Should I split catalog and database AND help with travel laptop

Forum|Forum|8 months ago
June 7, 2025
7 replies
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Two questions, hopefully that won't make things too confusing. I have PSE 2022.

My desktop is being overwhelmed by my photos so I'm planning on moving them to a 5T external hard drive.

First question: is it better to move the photos and the catalog to the external drive or just the photos and leave the catalog on the desk top?

Second question: when I travel I take with me a small laptop which I use to backup my photos. I would like to be able to do some basic editing and lableing of my photos while I'm traveling so that I don't come home to such so many photos that need to be dealt with. But I'm concerned that if I load PSE on my laptop and do editing on the road that when I return home and try to integrate them into my current catalog it will be a mess.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

How to

Correct answer Greg_S.

The difference in size of the folder is explained by the difference in the number of files contained within the folder. Without seeing the actual content of the folders, it is difficult to explain why there are more files in the restored folder. However, given the small size of those files, they appear to be small text files - possibly sidecar .xml files for raw files if you shoot in that format.

Greg_S.

Correct answer

Community Expert

The difference in size of the folder is explained by the difference in the number of files contained within the folder. Without seeing the actual content of the folders, it is difficult to explain why there are more files in the restored folder. However, given the small size of those files, they appear to be small text files - possibly sidecar .xml files for raw files if you shoot in that format.

garyf69654839Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the follow; I do also shoot in RAW so that might well explain it.

I have also tried switching my "working drive" between the desktop and my travel laptop and all appears to be working just fine. I'm pretty happy!

Thanks again for the your invaluable help!

Greg_S.

Community Expert

I have never noticed a difference in storage size of a folder that has been moved. It's possible that the change may occur because of the compression of files in the backup and decompression in the restoration. But that is just a guess on my part. Can you show us a screenshot example. And is it possible that you are comparing size vs size on disk? Those numbers can be different.

garyf69654839Author

Participating Frequently

I've looked through some of the files that were moved and haven't noticed any obvious differences, however, I haven't taken the time to do a one by one comparision. The "C" drive is where my photos started out, the "P" drive is where they were moved to. The screen print is of one file. More than the size difference, which really isn't great, I'm puzzled by the difference in the number of files. The new location (P) has more files than the old location (C).

Greg_S.

Community Expert

Again, just to be crystal clear - did you move the folders around in the My Folders panel Organizer? It is essential to use that method. Otherwise the Organizer doesn't know where you put them.

And to relieve your anxiety, maybe you can make a backup of the new (moved) catalog before deleting the files on your system drive.

garyf69654839Author

Participating Frequently

Yes, years ago had that lesson burned into me the hard way. But thanks for the reminder.

Will do it about the backup. Oddly enough have been comparing the "moved" files with the original files and finding small differences. The "moved" number of files in a particular folder will be equal to or greater than in the original, pre-move folder but the amount of bytes will be slightly greater in the original, pre-move folder than in the "moved" folder. Should I be concerned?

Greg_S.

Community Expert

Again, just to be crystal clear, the Catalog folder consists of more than the catalog.pse20db file. So you need to preserve the entire folder that contains that database file.

garyf69654839Author

Participating Frequently

Greg,

Thanks for double checking on that, though I had already decided to leave the entire file alone.

I did do the move to the external drive. All went well though not all of my file structure was maintained even though I'm sure I had checked for it to be maintained. In any case, not a big deal as it was only the subfolders that didn't go to their proper positions; the naming system I use for them made it easy to move them back to where they belonged.

At this point what remains is to delete the photos from their original position (which requires nerve!) and then to make a backup of the new position.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

Gary, I'm not sure whether you are understanding what a backup and restore involves. It may simply be some confusion over the wording. So, here is what I am suggesting:

You have backed up your catalog from your desktop computer to external drive #1 which we will call your safe copy. You will continue to backup your catalog to this drive periodically. This is a good practice and it will help prevent the loss of any work on your catalog up to the time that you made the backup.
You will restore the backup to external drive #2 which will be your working copy. It should NOT stay home. If it is your working copy, you will take it on your trip and use it with your travel laptop. The drive letter for this drive should be the same on the desktop and laptop. Since your catalog will also be on this drive, any work you perform on it on the laptop will be present and available on your desktop when you plug the drive back into your desktop computer.
When you restore the original catalog backup to drive #2, the working copy, it will also have a copy of the catalog database folder in its current condition. This copy of the catalog will also be looking for the media files on the external drive since that is where the backup has been restored. Yes, you can delete the media files (and the catalog folder) from your desktop drive. The catalog on the external drive will not be looking for them there. (However, if you have the room, you should just leave them where they are as an additional backup copy of your images created up to that point. Even if you delete the photos, you should still keep the catalog folder. It doesn't take up a lot of room and as I have indicated earlier, you can never have enough copies of your catalog (and media files).
If you make a backup to drive #3 before going on a trip, you would also have to restore it to the same drive. Otherwise it wouldn't work on your laptop.

One final tip: After you restore the backup to your working drive and plug that drive into either computer, you should look for a file named catalog.pse20db in the external drive's catalog folder. When you double-click on that file in Windows File Explorer, the catalog will open the catalog in the Organizer installed on that computer. Thereafter, the catalog will be automatically opened when you launch the Organizer with the external drive plugged into that computer.

Hope this helps.

garyf69654839Author

Participating Frequently

Greg,

Thanks for the patience and "hand holding" on this. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of traveling with my complete database ("working copy") but it makes sense, as long as I always have up to date backups at home. My normal procedure is to always have backups on two external hard drives, which are stored away from my desktop (and each other!).

Your instructions are very clear. I will have to eventually delete the photos off of my desktop as that computer can no longer handle the strain. However, I will leave the catalog folder intact (I'm assuming that's the file catalog.pse20db.).

Again, thanks for the help. Will work on this over the next few days.

Gary

Greg_S.

Community Expert

@garyf69654839 IMO the instructions given in the linked article are flat-out wrong or, at the very least, are inefficient and will lead to confusion.

You simply cannot merge two Elements catalogs.
Using the Move command only allows you to move photos to a single folder at a time.
Importing files from one catalog to another will remove face recognition information, or at the very least will require extra work to recreate People tagging, Albums and possibly other database information
Using this method may lead to inconsistent tags being applied.

You have the right idea. In your situation, it would be best to move both the catalog folder and the photos to your external drive. That way, you can use the external drive with both your laptop and desktop. Both devices will be using the same catalog and media files. Just make sure that the external drive is given the same drive letter on both computers.

The best way to copy the files to your external drive is to backup the catalog on your desktop and restore it to your external drive. Unless you have a huge catalog of photos and videos, you should be able to use the 5TB external drive to both backup and restore the catalog. However, since you can never have enough backups, I would recommend getting another external drive for the backup and use the second drive for the restoration of your working copy.

For more details on moving your catalog, see this Adobe HelpX article.

garyf69654839Author

Participating Frequently

Greg,

Thanks for the guidance; very helpful. This whole business makes me nervous as my photos go back years; I'd rather do it right than try to fix problems after.

* I have now installed PSE 2022 on my travel laptop (it's also what's on my desktop).

* I have backed up my catalog onto external hard drive #1. That is my safe copy and will be used for regular backups.

* I will now do a restore from the desktop to external hard drive #2 that will be my "working" hard drive that stays at home.

* After being certain that there are no issues with the import, I can then delete the files off the hard drive of my desktop. How do I do this so that the PSE program knows that from now on it is to look at external hard drive 2 instead of the desktop?

* Before going on a trip I will make a full backup of my catalog to my travel external hard drive (#3). While traveling I can make edits, etc. to this drive. When I return I will then restore this copy to my working hard drive. (#2).

Is this correct? Frankly, I'd probably be less nervous about moving into a new house than moving my PSE files!

W

williams_3721

Participant

If you want to manage your Photoshop Elements 2022 catalog on an external drive so it works across devices (like your travel laptop), check out this step-by-step guide:
👉 https://officelivetech.com/manage-pse-2022-catalog-external-drive-travel-laptop/

garyf69654839Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks William.

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