Path to photos broken

[carolep1234]

Hi I have just started using Elements Organiser 16. I have imported about 25,000 photos and until today all was well. I now find all my photos have the missing file mark in the top left of the thumbnail. Looking closer at the information for individual photos the path is F:\Photographs\Wedding\ or similar when it should be D:\Photographs\Wedding\.

I have just performed a test and imported a few images that were definitely imported from the D: drive but they too are “Missing” and their information shows the path as starting with F:

I guess I could re-import all the photos but then it could just happen again.

Does anyone understand what has happened and know of an enduring solution please

Thanks

Carole

[MichelBParis]

carolep1234  wrote

Hi I have just started using Elements Organiser 16. I have imported about 25,000 photos and until today all was well. I now find all my photos have the missing file mark in the top left of the thumbnail. Looking closer at the information for individual photos the path is F:\Photographs\Wedding\ or similar when it should be D:\Photographs\Wedding\.

I have just performed a test and imported a few images that were definitely imported from the D: drive but they too are “Missing” and their information shows the path as starting with F:

I guess I could re-import all the photos but then it could just happen again.

Does anyone understand what has happened and know of an enduring solution please

Thanks

Carole

Carole,

I suppose you are using an external drive?

You do know that Windows does assign the next available drive letter when you plug in an external drive, except if you have already set the drive letter of the drive further in the alphabet, like I: or S:

The drive letter can be different for your external drive depending on which other devices have been plugged in before.

The test to perform is to look at the drive letter shown by Windows.Do your test import and immediately compare the location of your imported files in the Explorer and in the information panel of the organizer (without disconnection in between). If they are different, that means that the identification of your different drives is wrong in the catalog. There are rare occurences for such issues. For instance, when drives are cloned and used in an external drive enclosure. Difficult to troubleshoot without knowing the history of the use of the external drive.

[carolep1234]

Hi Michel. Thanks for your reply. There are no external drives involved here. C: is a fast SSD. D: is a large internal mechanical hard drive. The behaviour described in my post involves no external drive. There is an F: drive in the machine but that is another (physically different) internal mechanical drive. It has never held my photos.

On reflection one other thing happened today PE did some kind of update. Could be relevant.

Thanks again

[MichelBParis]

External or internal drive, that is not relevant.

What makes your drive identification a bit more common today is the new trend to use SSD drives. Nothing related with the SS technology, but with the fact that SSD drives are small in capacity and that it is tempting to use them only for the OS and programs and to re-use the old master drive (internally or externally) to keep the photo library. Those SSD are shipped with cloning utilities to move OS and programs (but also catalogs with PSE). When you install the old drive, the organizer will see two different drives with the same Windows serial number even if the letters are now different.

That can be checked by using an sqlite utility and looking at the volume_table table of the 'catalog.pse16db' database. Two different entries in the table will point to the same file location. Some information in this help file for the psedbtool software from John R Ellis.

psedbtool (Photoshop Elements Database Tool)

What can you do if you have two drives with the same serial number? The catalog is wrong, it can't work safely with those two entries for the same location. So, even if you can  change the letter drive or the internal serial number from Windows, the catalog will stay wrong.

Can you confirm if the SSD has been 'cloned'?

If so, you may have a catalog copy in both of the drives (catalog location shown in the menu Help >> System Information).

Did you do a full organizer backup before the installation of the SSD drive?

[carolep1234 · Accepted solution]

Hi Michel. Thank you, your input has led me to a solution.

I did did indeed have two drives with the same volume serial number one of which holds the photo library (D:). The other drive (F:) held nothing of consequence so I reformatted it. That gave it a new volume serial number. Elements organiser now seems to work fine again and expects the photos to be on the D: drive rather than F:

I did try the psedbtool but it does not seem to work with the latest version of PSE. The notes by John R Ellis were helpful but they appear to be somewhat dated so anyone else finding this thread should bear that in mind.

It did occur to me that PSE should warn the user of duplicate serial numbers during installation, just a suggestion for Adobe.

Thank you once again

Carole

[MichelBParis]

carolep1234  wrote

It did occur to me that PSE should warn the user of duplicate serial numbers during installation, just a suggestion for Adobe.

I was also thinking about the same idea.

The question really is how could Adobe prevent such problems or warn users about the potential risk.

Your 'during installation' suggestion would be irrelevant: the catalogs are living independently from installations. The organizer updates the drives table based on the imported (indexed) files at any moment. The result is that long time users have a lot of useless old entries in that table without any bad consequence.

If you consider the number of 'Don'ts' the users should be warned about,  general warnings are an illusion or a simple lawful disclaimer.

So, where could Adobe usefully mention the present risk?

- perhaps a note in the Specs requirements about SSD migration?

- An addition to the various technical papers about organizer issues? That would only read after the problem has already arisen.

Really, I don't see what could warn you before you decide to install the SSD and to keep the old drive.

The one extremely useful step Adobe could could follow would be to include a standalone troubleshooting program covering the points made by John R Ellis. Yes the help file is old and not updated, that is clearly stated in its header. I always puts a link because all the information I can give come from his wonderful contribution.