Elements 2024 organiser with large number of files

@lori_3302 said:  could someone point me to the direction of the catalogs stored particularly the back ups?

The default location for your Elements 2024 catalog is:

C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs

(I assume you are a Windows user.)

@lori_3302 said:  i would like to back up the back up on my external hard drive. 

Are you talking about the automatic catalog structure backup or are you talking about a backup of the catalog structure together with all of your photos?  The automatic backup is not really intended for manual restoration.  It will be used by the program in the rare event of a problem with opening the original catalog.  To be honest, I have this automatic backup turned off and I forget where it is located.  It may be in the folder I have identified aboved.  If I have some time later, I will try to test my recollection.

My personal choice is to simply copy and paste the catalog folder (named My Catalog unless you have changed it) to the external drive, using Windows File Explorer. 

If you want to backup the catalog and the photos contained within the catalog's database, then you should use the Organizer's full backup feature.

@lori_3302 said:  is adobe still supporting and upgrading the product? i am not seeing it in the next suite of products

Adobe will still provide customer support until Elements 2026 is released.  There will be no further updates of Elements 2024 to fix bugs, or add or improve features.  If you use raw files, there are normally ways to update Adobe Camera Raw to support new cameras.

Note that Elements 2024 is the last version with a perpetual license.  It will work as long as your computer and OS support it.  (As a Windows user, I still have a working copy of Elements version 4 on my Win 11 machine.)  Elements 2025 is being sold with a 3 year term license.  We have been told that the Organizer will continue to function after the 3 years expires.  However, it is not a full subscription software that will update new features for as long as you hold the subscription.  Each year's version will be sold separately (with a new 3-year license).

@Alexander37128664z82g said:  but in the second case, where I may be looking at a drive with thousands of images, I wouldn't want to move the files, only index them

Just to be clear, that's all the Organizer does is index the files stored on your computer's hard drive.  Although the Bulk Import option would be available to you, it would probably not be a good idea in your case, since it may find image files that you are not interested in importing into your catalog.  Instead, I would recommend using the Import>From Files and Folders option.  This opens a navigation pane based on your OS.  You can multi-select folders, using standard OS techniques (Shift- and/or Ctrl-Click).  Once the folders are selected, click the Get Media button.

Just to add to what Glenn has said, my catalog currently has more than 250,000 media files,  including every type of photo format, and many video formats.  With a catalog of this size, I am seeing some very minor slowdown in performance.  For example, when I open the Organizer, it takes about 20 seconds for the catalog to fully load.  My subjective opinion is that there are some small increments of time when performing other file management operations.

However, if you are interested in face recognition, I highly recommend it.  This feature gets better each year in terms of both performance and accuracy.  In the early years of face recognition, I felt that I could tag people faster doing it manually.  Now, I wouldn't think about it.   But Glenn is correct in saying that, with a catalog your size, it may take many days to complete the media analysis.  In that regard, although video face recognition does not start until after all photos have been analyzed, you may want to turn that feature off.  Video face recognition takes a very long time and you may get many hits of the same person in a single video file.  So that will add to the time it takes you to name and/or confirm the name of the face recognition stacks.   The program provides a status (in the lower right of the window) of where it is in the face recognition of your catalog.  So, you will be able to see how many photos (or videos) are being analyzed per second/minute.  This will allow you to estimate how long the process will take.  In your case, I would recommend leaving your computer on 24/7 until the task is completed.

In addition to face recognition, the Organizer also analyzes the content of your files and adds Smart Tags to the catalog.  This is another feature that has improved over the years and provides an excellent search tool.  In fact, I have almost eliminated manual keyword tagging from my workflow.  But of course, this analysis does take up huge computer resources and I believe is the cause of both the Organizer and the Editor becoming non-responsive while it is in operation.  Depending on your computer specs, you may want to turn off this analysis if you find that it is interfering with your work on the computer.  (You can always turn it back on when you are not using the computer.)

Finally, I disagree with Glenn about backups.  Although the recent update to Elements 2024 has supposedly improved backups for large catalogs, I have not found that to be true.  Admittedly, this may be a problem related to my particular catalog.  However, the Elements full backup system is woefully slow.  Yes, you should backup the catalog folder (without media) frequently.  And, yes, you can use the Organizer's backup feature to do this both automatically and manually.  But, I find it far faster to backup the catalog using other utilities, including Windows File Explorer. 

If you are backing up to another hard drive, I recommend first compressing the catalog folder and then copying it to the other drive before unzipping it.  This is because your catalog, once analyzed will contain hundreds of thousands of small text files.  These take an exponentially longer time to transfer to another drive than a single large zip drive.  Even taking the zipping and unzipping into account, a large amount of time will be saved.  And since you are already using Acronis (presumably for your system drive and your photos), there is really no need to use the Organizer's backup system.

One last word of caution that cannot be emphasized enough.  You must use Glenn's advice to only conduct media file management within the Organizer.  This means not moving, deleting or renaming any photo or video files with any other program, including the OS.

I know of no upper limit to catalogue size. 

The first time you run the facial recognition stuff (It's called "media analysis") it can take a while-- in your case I'm guessing two or three weeks of 24/7 analysis.  It took my computer (A low end i5CPU) 3 days to run the media analysis the very first time on about 125,000 images.   You then have to confirm images organizer thinks may be "dave" for example. 

Think or Organizer as an old school card catalogue in a Library:   It's a record of where the image is, it's metadetails (f stop, apature, exposure, stuff like that), and a thumbnail of that image.  It does not move images.

Organizer montiors whatever folders you tell it to look in.   If you think "Well, I will just tell Organizer to look in "C:" DON'T.  It will find every single image a program uses-- tiny little icons too.   I made that mistake the first time I ran media analysis. 

ABOUT BACKUPS:  If you use organizer, you really need to use Organizer for backups-  using other backup programs can muck things up when you go to restore from that backup:   In Photoshop Elements the way to restore an image Catalogue is from within Organizer.

If you change the locations of image directories / folders you need to do it from within Organzier.

MORE ABOUT BACKUPS:  You can backup just the catalogue (All those file cards in the library card catalogue I spoke about earlier) or the catalogue AND all the images.    

PERSONALLY:   I don't care enough to bother worrying about any of the media analysis--  it literally can suck the life out of you "Well, Sam I've got 354,976 images to analyse and run facial recognition, see you is six months" .   So you have found all 3,947 images of "uncle Dave"   now what?    

I would  only get that involved with the media analysis and facial recognition  if I have tons of time to kill.   You're the only one that really cares about your image collection-- do whatever makes you happy.