10
Replies
Same here, a major problem. Have a little over 1TB of photos and videos and can never backup the catalog. Elements Organizer stalls and becomes unresponsive when generating the backup while displaying the screen message that it is "generating the catalog". Have let it run for over 24 hours and still fails to backup. The problem has been ongoing and is sufficiently well documented to merit a resolution from Adobe!
By @LemonPeeler
The problem is as old as the organizer, and can be summarized like this: the backup process scans all media files, creates a renamed version of each file, updates the backup.tly file and makes a few checks about the validity of the file. We would expect a clear error message when such a non valid or corrupt file stops the process, but that's still not happening. There is an urgent need to at least publish a procedure to retrieve the 'log' files for errors in the process. There is also no official way of using an alternative backup procedure which ensures keeping the links to the restored location on a different drive.
From the many complaints we are getting, there is a major issue with a few video formats, but also with some specific photo formats. The general advice was to create a catalog folder copy - use it to delete all video files from catalog, not from disk. Most of the time that worked. Then you could start the same copy, deleting one type of video only, until you find the unsupported one. If you can find the error log and a corrupt photo file, that can also help. I don't know if the suggestion from Akash Sharma about some other external drive or USB hubs is frequent, but I have had issues with some external drives configs.
If you can't run the organizer backup succesfully, use other alternative backup or syncing solutions for both your photo files and your catalog folders. Reconnecting a big library like yours (a bit larger than mine) is nearly impossible.
I suspect that if your photo library is on its own drive, a 'clone' could work with the same catalog (with same drive letter) since the internal serial number of the drive would be also 'cloned'. Maybe something to try.
.......
One of our observations, so far, is that Adobe Elements seems to struggle handling the processing demanded by face recognition, cataloging, and catalog backups. Our computer has a great CPU, ample memory, and tons of disk space, but runs endlessly or hangs up trying to perform these tasks for the Organizer. We can understand the demands of face recognition, but that is palatable since we can turn it off by exiting the program and continue later. On the other hand, the catalog backup simply does not work. We're assuming that the catalog is just that, and not a backup of all the image files. So, not sure why the program has such a hard time archiving just file locations, types, or other cross-reference information in the catalog database. In the end, we wonder if this program can even handle such tasks.
By @LemonPeeler
No, I as said, the orgnizer backup saves (copies and rename) both the media files and all the data in the catalog folder. That's an exclusive feature of the organizer which other 'pro' management softwares like Lightroom do not offer.Your photo library (the photo or video files) is large, and even without the renaming task and updating of the backup.tly file, you don't use much more backup time than simply copying your 880 GB. If you want to save your catalog folder, simply copy it elsewhere, that's fast, simple and safe.
In your situation, you should absolutely:
- write metadata to files, which would enable any other file management software to recover most of your tagging from a copy of your files tree.
- use any other kind of backup, syncing or cloning app to create an external backup.
- make a copy of your catalog folder.
By the way, that's something you should do like me regularly even if the organizer backup and restore works. Syncing is much faster than a full backup copying all the media files. I absolutely don't trust only a NAS as a backup, I have several backups on USB external drives on different locations, hundreds of miles apart. Think about fire, flood, theft, user big errors, Cloud issues...
So, what is the risk and the penalty of your present issue?
- You can't move easily your library and catalog to a new drive or PC.
- You'll be able to recover both library and catalog, but on a different drive or PC, all your location links in the database will be disconnected. And reconnecting in your case is an impossible task...
Also, do you still have older full backups, even for older PSE versions?
Once you have taken the above safety tasks, we can try to suggest further steps.
Having the same problem with Elements 2023, only 17k photos no video. Have will it work when I have transfer all of my photos
By @keithE 53
Hi Keith,
We have seen several examples of problems in the same step of the workflow. In my last full backup (nearly 1TB and 90 000 files) that step lasted a bit longer than usual (a few minutes). So, it's possible that there is a new issue. It will not be long before I try another one on my newly installed laptop. I'll come back with my results. I am on Win 11 and I don't use face recognition which is a factor of slowness in the backup process.
Michel
AdChoices