Pre not reconnecting after restore to different drive

susanh58314995  wrote I got a new SSD and cloned my old C drive to it and it was working fine with Pre 14. But I want to move the catalog and files off the nearly full SSD to the other internal drive (old C: drive, wiped and now called E:) for storage, run the OS and program on the SSD I backed up following the backup/restore directions to an external drive and attempted to restore to the E: drive and the Catalog says it's the E: drive, but the Organizer is looking for the files in C: not the E: drive.  The rest of the file structure matches what is located on E: starting with the TestPRErestore folder that Pre created with the backup, BUT it's looking in the C: drive.  I've tried Optimizing but it just says it is optimized.  How do I get Pre to actually LOOK in the drive I've told it to?  I don't want to have to manually reconnect 4,000 files.  AND I have to turnaround and do the same for 20K images in PSE 13.

Your problem is in the cloning.

That looks like a similar discussion in the Photoshop Elements forum.

If you clone a drive, the new drive will work exactly like the original one.

But...

The organizer stores the identification of your drives with two parameters.

- the drive letter

- the internal serial number of the drive (useful for external drives which are assigned different letters depending on the other installed devices)

The cloning restores both parameters.

If everything, catalog and photo / video files is on the same drive, no problem

If the media files are on another drive, no problem either.

... until you want to re-use the original drive as well, internally or not.

The organizer database has now two drives with the same identification, and it is totally fooled...

To avoid this problem, it's possible to assign in Windows a different internal serial number to the original drive to be re-used.

More details in this help file from John R Ellis:

psedbtool (Photoshop Elements Database Tool)

The backup and restore process is ok if you don't have the same internal serial number.

The situation was extremely rare until the advent of small SSD which often come with 'cloning' utilities.

So, the good practice is now to avoid re-using the original drive to store photos (I guess there will be no problem to use them for backups).

I would also move my media files (not necessarily the catalog folders) to another dedicated drive (internal or external) before cloning the master C: drive. You can either move a whole folder tree from the organizer in the left folder panel or use the backup/restore method.

Can you change the drive letter of the E drive to C and see if that works?

I can't tell you how to get PrE to change where it looks.  The issue has to do with "long file names" where PrE internal references use file names that begin with the drive letter.   I don't use Organizer, but suspect it is the same. 

I also don't know your file structure, but depending on where your media is, relocating one file can relocate all of them.  Lightroom works similarly.

I can suggest how I manage the same situation.  For a project I create a unique folder on my SSD where I put everything related to that project from the media file copies to the scratch disks and final output.  When done, I move the entire folder to a storage drive.  If I want to work on it again, I move the folder back to the SSD.