Move Catalog from Win to Mac

Report · Jul 01, 2019

I'm using PSE since several years and have a catalog with about 50.000 pictures. The catalog itself is stored on my Windows 10 PC and the pictures are stored on my NAS.

Now, I want to move from my Windows PC to a MacBook.

In order to move the PSE catalog to my Mac I have installed PSE 2019 on both machines.

I did a backup on my Windows PC and restored it to my Mac.

Even if PSE reported to have restored the catalog successfully on my Mac, the connection to the pictures stored on my NAS is lost. Obiously the Mac cannot work with the path-information that PSE has stored on my Windows PC.

I tried to let PSE fix the lost connections to my pictures automatically but this failed and I would have to do this manually. But doing this for 50.000 pictures would take me a lot of time...

Does anybody have an idea how I can move my catalog?

Thanks in advance!

Sebastian

Report · Jul 02, 2019

Normally you would specify a new location during restore. This could be a separate partition on the NAS. The catalog and all files are then copied. Did you make the Organizer backup to an external hard drive?

Report · Jul 02, 2019

I did the backup to a separate hard drive in my Win PC. Afterwards I removed this and connected it to my Mac. Then I started restore on my Mac from the backup hard drive.

However, I was not able to use my NAS as destination for restoring. PSE told me that the catalog can only be stored locally and not on a network drive.

How can I separate the restore: catalog locally and pictures to my NAS? It seems that I missed this option?

Report · Jul 02, 2019

I’ve not done it personally but if you choose a custom location is it not possible to select the NAS?

Is the NAS mounted e.g showing up in Finder or on the desktop?

Report · Jul 02, 2019

Restore the backup is either possible into the original location or to a new location. But whatever you choose, both the catalog and the pictures, are restored to that location. And PSE does not allow to restore the catalog to a network drive.

Yes, the NAS is mounted to my Mac and I can access it with the finder and it is shown on the desktop.

Report · Jul 02, 2019

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Sebastian+Beer wrote
Restore the backup is either possible into the original location or to a new location. But whatever you choose, both the catalog and the pictures, are restored to that location. And PSE does not allow to restore the catalog to a network drive.

I don't know about Macs, but if the blocking issue is that the catalog can't be stored on a NAS, I would sugest a two steps process:

- restore on another external USB drive, where you are allowed to store the catalog.

- open the catalog and use the organizer to move your media files tree by drag and drop in your left folders panel in tree view to your NAS.

After that, I hope you can manage the restored catalog with the moved files on the NAS. You can then copy the whole catalog folder from the temporary external drive to somewhere on your main computer.

Edit:

I would create a small test catalog to test the process.

Moving by drag and drop might take some time, don't abort the process (no progress bar available).

Report · Jul 02, 2019

Yes, I tried this yesterday. Moving the files within the organizer of PSE does move the files to the NAS.

However, to unknown reason the catalog is not updated to the new location of the pictures and therefore the moved pictures afterwards are no longer connected to the pictures on the NAS. I have to restore the connection afterwards manually which is very time consuming.

Report · Jul 03, 2019

What about the editor?

Can you open or save a file from/to your NAS?

Report · Jul 03, 2019

The editor is working as expected. I can open edit and save a picture from the organizer, as long as it has a correct link to the NAS.

Report · Jul 03, 2019

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Sebastian+Beer wrote
The editor is working as expected. I can open edit and save a picture from the organizer, as long as it has a correct link to the NAS.

In other words, the editor uses correctly the drive identification and path from your OS (Finder) and the catalogs does not store the drive identification correctly, or something in the OS blocks that identification. (I don't think there is anything wrong with the path).

Not knowing both Macs and NAS , the only troubleshooting I can suggest is to test other organizer features.

- create a new empty test catalog.

- try to 'import' a test subfolder on the NAS. (The identification of a new drive is stored in the catalog at the first import).

- report for error messages. If that works, try to 'duplicate' one those imported files in another subfolder of the NAS. Try to use the full screen browsing (F11), the 'update thumbnail' command.

Report · Jul 03, 2019

Thanks for your continued support.

I will do some further testing and report my result to this threat afterwards.

My goal is to move the catalog from my Windows PC to my Mac with the pictures remain in the same folder on my NAS.

Report · Jul 04, 2019

I did further testing as follows:

I have created a new catalog on my Windows PC and added a few pictures stored on my NAS.
I did a full backup of this catalog.
I started a restore of the backup on my MacBook.
- Here I recognized a difference compared to the Win PC:
- On Windows you have three options for restore:
  1. Restore to the original location.
  2. Restore to a new location.
  3. Restore to a new location and re-created the original files structure for the pictures.
- On MacOS you can only choose between alternative 2 and 3!
I did a restore to a new location with re-creation of the original file structure.
Restore worked without problems and as expected. However, afterwards the pictures were copied to the local HD of my Mac.
I moved the pictures on the Mac HD using the organizer. This worked well.
I moved the pictures within the organizer from the local HD of my Mac to the NAS.
The procedure seemed to work as PSE organizer displayed the progress. No failure was reported.
Afterwards I checked in finder and in fact the pictures were moved from the Mac HD to the correct folder of the NAS.
However, the path information in PSE for each of the pictures were not updated to the new location. The path was still pointing to the Mac HD folder.

Doing the above test I have the feeling that moving the catalog from Win to Mac does not work in my situation due to two shortcomings of PSE. 1. the restore procedure is missing the required option and 2. Moving the pictures by the organizer does not work correctly.

Any suggestions how I can proceed?

Report · Jul 05, 2019

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Sebastian+Beer wrote
I did further testing as follows:
I have created a new catalog on my Windows PC and added a few pictures stored on my NAS.
I did a full backup of this catalog.
I started a restore of the backup on my MacBook.
Here I recognized a difference compared to the Win PC:
On Windows you have three options for restore:
Restore to the original location.
Restore to a new location.
Restore to a new location and re-created the original files structure for the pictures.
On MacOS you can only choose between alternative 2 and 3!
I did a restore to a new location with re-creation of the original file structure.

Good troubleshooting.

I don't think it's any diferent in Macs: the restore to original location is available only if the original drive is available and recognized.

Restore worked without problems and as expected. However, afterwards the pictures were copied to the local HD of my Mac.

When you restore to custom location, everything is restored on the custom destination drive. If you have the original files in several drives, other drives are restored in new master folders named after the original drives. That was to be expected.

I moved the pictures on the Mac HD using the organizer. This worked well.
I moved the pictures within the organizer from the local HD of my Mac to the NAS.
The procedure seemed to work as PSE organizer displayed the progress. No failure was reported.
Afterwards I checked in finder and in fact the pictures were moved from the Mac HD to the correct folder of the NAS.
However, the path information in PSE for each of the pictures were not updated to the new location. The path was still pointing to the Mac HD folder.

What is puzzling is that it seems that the organizer is able to correctly send the location and path on the NAS when issueing direct commands to the OS, but the path stored in the catalog is wrong. Very odd indeed. What would be needed would to check the contents of the database (catalog.pse17db, volume_table), but I have no idea how that works for Macs. It would help if other Mac users with a NAS could reproduce the issue.

Report · Jul 05, 2019

It might be a good idea to look into the database. Maybe I can manually replace the path information to my NAS. Can you suggest me a software that I can use for that purpose?

Report · Jul 05, 2019

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Sebastian+Beer wrote
It might be a good idea to look into the database. Maybe I can manually replace the path information to my NAS. Can you suggest me a software that I can use for that purpose?

I am using database .net (with a space before .net), it's for Windows.

You should find something for a sqlite browser for Mac.

Report · Jul 05, 2019

I still have my Win PC so I will give that software try.

Report · Jul 05, 2019

MichelBParis schrieb
Good troubleshooting.
I don't think it's any diferent in Macs: the restore to original location is available only if the original drive is available and recognized.

This is important information. I will do some test with PSE on my Mac in order to find out, when PSE acknowledges that the location is the same as on my Win PC.

Report · Jul 06, 2019

MichelBParis schrieb
I don't think it's any diferent in Macs: the restore to original location is available only if the original drive is available and recognized.

I tested this the following way:

Created a new catalog locally on my Mac
Added some pictures that are stored locally on my Mac
Did a backup of this catalog.
Started a restore of the backup.

Still the dialog for restore does only provide two options. 1. New location or 2. New location with restore original pathes.

The option to restore to the original location is not provided.

Any mistake in my procedure?