Creating Backups of catalogs and Faces

[MackoM]

Hello Friends,

After using PSE for many years for just the basics,and having more than 50K Fotos and Videos I am advancing to the 2025 Premier and would like to use it in depth.

For a start I want to create catalogs of media and of people and locate it on one of my HDDR's ( I have 5) on the PC. I am going to use this drive only for working with PSE (system drive is not very reliable.)

..

I am using an SSD for speed. I have created a subfolder _PSO. Is it possible to create every few days (automatically or manually) a backup of the Indexes to the media (catalog) + People? I tried to create a backup it occupies 250 gigs. This must be the wrong type with too much info!

Could someone please advise me what to do step be step?

..

Kindest regards to all of you and have a nice day
Peter
[Personal email address removed by Moderator]

[Greg_S.]

All of your face recognition information is contained within the Organizer's catalog folder.

@MackoM said:  I tried to create a backup it occupies 250 gigs. This must be the wrong type with too much info!

Yes, you must have backed up the catalog and your media files.  You haven't told us what your last version of Elements was and whether that was the version you used to make your backup.  In any event, in Elements 2025 (and more recent versions), if you use the File>Backup feature, you have the option to only backup the catalog structure:

As stated, your photo and video files will not be part of this backup and it will only be a fraction of the size of the full backup you made.  I have a catalog of nearly 300k files and the catalog folder is about 23GB.  A catalog structure backup will be slightly smaller.

@MackoM said: Is it possible to create every few days (automatically or manually) a backup of the Indexes to the media (catalog) + People?

In Elements 2025 (and some earlier versions), there is a option in Edit>Preferences to make an automatic backup of the catalog files weekly, monthly or upon every exit.

Whenever the assigned time occurs, you will see the following screen upon closing the program:

You then have the option to confirm the backup process or to skip it.

However, I believe this automatic backup is only intended to be used in the case of a failure of the original catalog to open properly.  (I never use it, but I am currently performing a test to see whether it can be opened manually.  Since my catalog is so large, it will probably take a couple of hours to perform the test.  I will report back later.)

@MackoM  said:  I want to create catalogs of media and of people

I'm not sure whether you intended to say that you want to create multiple catalogs.  I strongly advise against that.  For normal home use, there should be only one catalog. 

[Greg_S.]

After testing the automatic backup, I have found that it is possible to launch the catalog by double-clicking on the catalog.pse25db file.  However, the auto backup does not contain the thumbnails found in the catalog and they will have to be regenerated.  (This happens automatically, but with a large catalog it can take a while.)