Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 and Catalogue back-up

K.Baetens wrote: Hi, Sorry for the late answer. I did what you advised me to do. Indeed there were some video files in the catalog. I made a copy of the catalog and tried the full backup after removing the video files. But without result. Is there something else that I can try to solve this problem? Thanks in advance.

It looks like you still have a 'problem' file even if it's not a video.

There may be ways to look for that file, but what I would do now as a workaround to do the transfer now:

- I'd use an external USB3 drive.

- for safety, I would make a copy of your media files tree from the Explorer or any other backup/copy software. The catalog won't be updated, but your files are saved.

Now, the process in details:

- from the catalog manager, I would use the 'Folders location' display

- I would move the folders by drag and drop in the left panel to a new master folder on the external drive. That can be done in one step or in several moves of folders branches. Be patient... that takes the same time as an organizer backup, withoug any progress bar.

- In the process, the catalog is still on your computer. You can use it even when only a part of the photo files are moved, provided the external drive is plugged in.

- If you can perform the move totally, you simply have to make a copy of your catalog folder (location found in the menu Help >> System Information) somewhere in your new computer.

- With Elements installed on the new computer as well as the catalog, you check that the external drive has the same drive letter as before. If it's not, you can use Windows to set it correctly.

- You use the catalog manager to browse to the new catalog folder location and you are able to work with all your media files. You are still able to plug the external drive to the original computer, and that works as well with the external media library.

We don't know if the 'problem' files will trigger the same error while moving than while backing up, hence my advice to do a full copy before. That's why it may be a good idea to move only some folder branches at a time; you might find the location of the problem files that way.

Another process would mean to copy your media files on the external drive as described above, then copy your catalog folder (as above) and use the Organizer function to 'reconnect' missing files. That may take a lot of time and efforts, but it's another safety.

Of course, you could use the 'import' feature of the organizer to get the files from the external drive to the new computer, but even if you had 'written' metadata to files, you would not recover your albums, stacks and version sets, only the keywords and captions.