Backup Catalog Photoshop Elements 2023

[Eric473]

I'm wondering if anyone has been able to use the Backup Catalog feature in Elements 2022 or 2023. I have 2019 but I get an error. The solution based on other posts is to remove the videos and add them back, but I have about 500 videos, so this isn't a great option (https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-elements-discussions/pourquoi-la-sauvegarde-du-catalogue-de...)

If a newer version of Elements works without removing the videos I'll upgrade.

Thanks,

Eric

[Eric473]

I checked with Support and I was told that the backup issue should not be there in newer versions of Photoshop Elements. Has anyone been able to run a full backup with videos in Photoshop Elements 2022 or 2023?

Thanks,
Eric

[Walter_H]

@Eric473,

Yes, I have successfully run a full backup in both PSE2022 & PSE2023. My photo catalog does contain some videos - maybe around 150. I did not have any problems.

[Eric473]

Well, I thought I'd share one more post about the Catalog back up now that I have it working. I spend hours on this so hopefully it will save others some time. I could not do a Full Backup in Photoshop Elements on my old laptop because my hard drive is failing. I tried other suggestions, such as Optimize, Repair, and removing the 500+ videos I had in my catalog. My back up would still hang as my hard drive slowly stopped working.

The Solution:

1. Copy the pictures/files from the old computer to the new computer in the same file structure (I have all of my cataloged files starting under one main folder so this was easy)

2. On the old computer, go to C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs and copy the catalog you want to copy to an external drive (the folder names will be the names of your catalogs, such as My Catalog)

3. On the new computer, paste the catalog into the same directory on the new computer.

4. Open Photoshop Elements Organizer, and go to File:Manage Catalogs and select the catalog you moved over and click Open. 

5. I did a search for missing links after opening the catalog just to be sure, but if all the files were copied over there shouldn't be any.

For some reason I couldn't find this option anywhere, especially given how easy it was.

Thanks

[MichelBParis]

Hi Eric,

"

For some reason I couldn't find this option anywhere, especially given how easy it was."

The reason is that a lot of people have tried that solution unsuccessfully for the following reason:

When you have copied both the media files tree and the catalog folder in another computer (or disk), the copied catalog contains links to the original location of each photo file. That means the path in the folder tree AND the internal serial number of the disk. So, if you are on a different disk, all links are pointing to a location which is no longer accessible, and all the files are shown as missing.

So, we'll have to find out what is special in your case; more precisely, if and why the original drive and the new one have the same internal serial number.

The DOS command to find out the serial number of a disk with letter x will be :

vol x:

If you can't check your old disk serial and if you don't know how to examine the hidden data in the sqlite database, let's see how you might have assigned the same internal serial number to the new drive.

- It's possible to get the serial number as above and also to assign in Windows a new one.

- If you have 'cloned' the old drive, the serial number will be kept.

- special case: all your media files were ALL on an external drive: if it is sound, you only need the copy of the catalog foler. It can be located nearly anywhere and will still point to the original external drive. That's the common way to share a media folders tree and a catalog  on a single external drive that you plug in alternatively to two or more computers with the same version of pse.

[Eric473]

Hi Michel,

I checked the serial numbers and they are different.

On both computers, my files are on a D:\ drive in one root folder. The drive on each computer is also the same size, 2TB.

I didn't clone the drive, I put all of the pictures on an external drive then copied to the new hard drive in the same path on my new computer.

Maybe I just got lucky, but at least it worked. I was worried I was going to lose all my tags.

Thanks,
Eric