Can you restore only the catalog on PE 21?

[Jha28]

I have all of my images on an external hard drive but my catalog was on the local C:drive.  Recently the C drive crashed and a catalog from February 2024 has been recovered.   I have a full backup from January 2024 and two incrementals from October 2024 and March 2025. on a second hard drive  Can I restore only the most recent catalog without restoring the images?  If not I am wondering if I can restore just the two incremental backups?  I have never had to restore before so I am uncertain how this works. I know I will have to re-import and re-tag all images after March 2025  regardless of how I recover.  

[Greg_S.]

@Jha28 said:  Recently the C drive crashed and a catalog from February 2024 has been recovered.

If you mean that you have been able to recover the catalog folder from the crashed drive, then all you need do is find the catalog.pse19db file in the folder and double-click on it. (It doesn't matter where the folder is located.)  The catalog will open and will find the original media as long as they are in the original location. 

[Jha28]

My C: drive for all intents and purpose is as it was February 2024.  I can open the Organizer (and Editor) and see all of my images as of February 2024.  What I am asking is whether there is a way to recover a version of the catalog from a later date from the incremental backups taken in October 2024 and March 2025?  Images on the external drive are in their original location and were not affcted by the loss of the C  drive and do not need to be "restored" (or reloaded). 

[Greg_S.]

Using the latest backup and restoring to the original location should work for you.  However, when you perform an incremental restore, you need to have all of the preceding backups available so that they can be compared.  You also need to restore the backup using the restore original folder structure option.  See this article for more details.  (I have never done an incremental backup restore so can't advise whether you may have any other issues.  In any event, the current catalog should remain intact.  The restoration will create a new catalog on your computer at a location you choose.  I suggest restoring the catalog in a new folder rather than the default location that may be offered to you.)  Please let us know how it goes.

Added:   The restore process should not touch any of the files in your current folder structure on the hard drive.  It will only create a new catalog folder with a database that is updated until the time the backup was last created.

[Jha28]

I uderstand what you are saying and I read the article to which you pointed.  I have the full backup from January  2024 on the same external disk as the two incremental backups.  All of these backups were of the catalog and the images, i.e., I did not do a backup of the Catalog structure.  How do you speify that ONLY the catalog is to be restored and NOT any of the image files?  I don't see an option for that.  

[Greg_S.]

There is no option.  But if you use the original folder structure option, only the missing files will be added to the hard drive.  The Restore process will recognize that the files identified in the restored catalog are already where they should be and won't add duplicates.

[Greg_S.]

. . .  and, of course, the restored catalog folder, which will be a new catalog, will be added by the restoration to the location that you select.

[Jha28]

Okay.  I tried what you suggeted; i.e., restoring from the latest incremental backup to a separate folder for the catalog with the original folder option.  As it started the program said you need to have all three backups available which I did (they are all on the same external drive) so I think it knew what I had done.  However, after chugging along processing it came up and said "where is the next backup?" with no choice but supplying a file name or cancel. Do you think I should try doing the same thing but starting with the full backup?  At the speed the first recovery ran I think it is not updating the image files as you said.