Cannot backup or restore Organizer 2023 on Mac M2

[Monte307]

Last week I bought a new Mac mini with the latest M2 chip, Photoshop elements 2023, and a new Sandisk SSD drive.  I did a full backup of my old Mac running Organizer 2021, to the new SSD drive.   First I tried restoring this Org2021 backup to the new computer running Org2023, but the restore crashes.  I then installed Org2021 on the new machine and the restore was successful to Org2021.  I then opened Org2023 and was able to convert the catalog ok.  So all the images and meta are now fine on the new Org2023,  and I am able to backup the Catalog Structure ok,  but a Full Backup crashes.  I have forwarded the crash report to Adobe but no response yet.  Any ideas appreciated!

 

[Jamie284863994od6]

Monte307,

Same thing is happening to me. I have full backup of Organizer 2021, from intel macbook pro running Catalina. Just bought new Macbook Pro 16 M2 Pro running Organizer 2023, tried doing catalog restore, crashes at 62%. My catalog is large 700 GB, but had no problem before. I made sure catalog backup had only pictures, no video, no songs, but still does not restore. Did you every get anything to work. Need Adobe to fix this ASAP, so I can move to my new computer. Thanks for responding.

[Monte307]

I tried all kinds of things, like you only pictures, no video, no songs, no special characters in the file names.  Nothing worked, so I finally reingested into a new catalog and am now retagging everything from scratch.   All my restores succeed restoring to Org21, but fail with Org23. 

Even with a clean install ingesting pics from scratch (no restore from a prior version) my Org23 backups crash at around 99%.  I tested a restore from one of these crashed backups and it seemed to work ok.     Based on all these crashes and hours of wasted time I consider Organizer 2023 on Mac M2 a beta version at this point, not ready for prime time.

[Jamie284863994od6]

Monte,

Thank you for responding so quickly. I don't want to do that from scratch again. I guess I will move everything to my new Mac except my pictures and hope/pray that Adobe gets this fixed soon. Did they respond to you about it?

[Monte307]

I sent the crash reports to Adobe, describing what I was doing at the time and providing an email address.  Haven't heard from them yet.

[Greg_S.]

I suggest you try contacting Elements support. You can start a chat session by clicking on the blue Contact Us button under the Help & Support menu at Adobe.com. Or you can contact Support by telephone using the numbers listed here: https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/phone.html. Hours of operation for Support outside of the United States are limited. See the phone link for details.

[Monte307]

Thanks, I'll give it  a try.

[Monte307 · Accepted solution]

What finally worked was I simply copied the Org21 catalog and the files to my new Mac mini, *not* using the backup or restore routine.  I then opened Org23 on my new machine and pointed to the Org21 catalog, converted the catalog, and all seems to be working correctly.

[Jamie284863994od6]

Monte,

Glad to hear you got it working. Unfortunately for me I can not get it to work. I know this is alot to ask. Can you list your steps what you did. I made a catalog backup from my other computer to harddrive, I then copied that folder over to the new computer (747 GB),  I then launched Org23 on the new computer and selected manage catalogs, I tried to convert the catalog but nothing showed up to select. I know I'm not doing something right, could you please advise me? Thank, you.

[Monte307]

I didn't do a Backup / Restore catalog, instead I simply copied the catalog directories, and the image files over to the exact same file structure locations on the new M2 machine as where they were on the old machine.  I then opened Org23, then File - Manage Catalogs, selected the 'Custom Location' button, and hit the Browse button to navigate to the old Org21 catalog I had copied over to the new machine.  It prompted me to convert if I remember right, then opened up and all was copacetic.  Both my old and new machines use the same username, which may be required for a straight file copy to work. 

[Jamie284863994od6]

Monte,

Thanks for the help. I did as you said and copied everything over, I too could keep the same file structure. I went to manage catalog and converted. So, now I have all my pictures on the new computer, seems fine. However, I tried to do a regular backup of the catalog like always, and it will not do a backup. I think this version of Org23 is buggy as heck, it can't do restore, and now can't do backup. How about you? Can you do a backup with Org23 on your new MacBook Pro M2? Thank you for all the advice.

[Monte307]

I too get backup failures.  Sometimes they work ok, more often they crash.  I quit using the backup/restore utilities altogether, instead I just do a stright filesystem copy of the images and catalog.  I agree with you Org23 is buggy as heck.

[Jamie284863994od6]

Monte,

I had not tried to do a backup or even add photos to my catalog all this time, until last weekend. I was able to do two backups without incident. Did you get it to eventually backup? One thing, I thought I had all none photos off, but I found one video that was on it, it had originally been taken by an Android phone. I deleted this, and then tried the backup and it worked.