Restore Adobe Elements 2021 (Photoshop, Premiere & Organizer)

[Tone42]

Hi!

I am about to perform a complete PC rebuild  on one of my two PCs  by installing a bigger system SSD (rebuild from scratch, not simple disk cloning), a task that I consider necessary but very much fear to fail. 

So, I'm kindly asking that some expert from the community adience confirms/corrects/modifies/completes my understanding of ensuring smooth continuity of my Adobe Elements applications.

Before rebiuld:

- complete backups of all catalogues (catalog structures backup seem to me sufficient, all media is on extra disk storage), save backups to an extra disk storage

- sign-out Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements

After rebuild:

- download & reinstal Adobe Elements 2021

- sign-in Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements

- restore all catalogs (structure) from backup files, while all media is available on the extra disk storage mapped exactly as at the time of backuping

All warnings, reminders, tricks.... are more that welcome.

Kind regards, 

Tone

[MichelBParis]

The good news is that you have your media files on an external drive.

You only need to copy each individual catalog folder to the new computer from the explorer.

You copy the whole folder with all its subfolders to a new location of your choice, it can be alongside the external drive holding your media.

When all folders are copied under the master folder you have chosen or created, you have the choice to move them back to the default (hidden) location of the new computer.

The advantages of storing also the new catalogs in the external drive is that you can access them directly from another computer with the same PSE version just by plugging it.

To launch the organizer with catallyogs  located in a custom location, just double click on the catalog.pse24db file in each catalog.

[Tone42]

Hi MichelBParis,

Thank you very much for the valuable reply.

Just to make sure I understand correctly, as I am not very knowledgeable about Adobe Elements bits and pieces: you are saying that instead of backing up / rebuilding of Organizer catalog data base it is sufficient to save the complete folder C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs to an extra drive  and copying them back to the same location after the the AE re-installation?  No need to make backups and restores, then. 

And is it truth that AE Organiser is able to run with catalog files outside C:\ProgramData... ? That would be a big, but pleasant surprise for me.

Kind regards,

Tone

[Greg_S.]

The answer is yes to both of your questions.

• In your situation, you don't need to use the Organizer's backup/restore process to move the catalogs to a new computer or drive.  Simply copy and pasting the folders to the same folder hierarchy works just fine.
• You can move the catalog folders wherever you want.  However, I suggest you keep all of the catalog folders in the same parent folder.  That way, it will be easy to find multiple catalogs in a Custom location in the File>Manage Catalogs dialog.

[Greg_S.]

Michel's post has a small typographical error. You are using Elements 2021. So the name of the file to double- click on is catalog.pse19db. 

And while it may not be relevant to your situation, I suggest that you recreate the exact same Windows User Accounts on the new machine as are on the old one. 

[Tone42]

Today is the D day for putting my catalogues back to function on the rebuilt Win10 and reinstalled Adobe Elements trio app. 

If most of the things in the system rebuilt process went smooth and straitforward,  I must say that contrary to my expectations and promissing info above this reply restoring catalogs certainly seems a harder task. 

1. attempt: cpoying the complete CATALOGS folder (previously copied from the old C disk to an extra disk) back to C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Elements 2021 Organizer\. There was no catalogs folder there. When I started the organiser, it appeared with MY CATALOG, but no other catalog was visible.

2. attempt: I tried to run the catalog.pse19db file respectively per catalog,  selecting the organizer.exe as the due application, and much to my surprise found out that either the file is missing or belongs to the version 14 or is simply anappropriate for the application

3. attempt: restore from the backup files seems to be ok but only when i define an extra folder on C disk as a target. Backup did not let me select the C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Elements 2021 Organizer\ folder to write in it (in spite I am the PC admin!).

Any comment?

At the time I am writing this the restore of my huge catalog takes place. So I am still to discover what I realy managed to do and how the whole thing performs in praxis. If anything that I did wrong could be mended or done in a better way I count on the intact old system disk that I intend to put in an appropriate USB enclosure.

Kind regards, Tone

[Tone42]

To whom it may concern

I continue to report here because my experience might be of some help to somebody or even to myself if I ever have to redo the whole process and forget in the mean time what I'm learning now.

So far I found 2 major mistakes I made:

1. my username on the rebuilt Win10 is not equal to what is used to be on the previous Win10

2. at the restore phase I failed to check the box "restore original folder structure", so the result is a catalog with chaotic flat folder structure.

I'm back to the manual, then I would repeat the exercise :).

[Tone42]

Again:  To whom it may concern.

Seems that this is going to be a neverending, recuring story, a kind of the movie The groundhog Day. 

At the momement I am writing this I am in the middle of the transfer of my Image Editing Environment from my old Win10 NB to my new Win11 Desktop. It is painful and frustrating experience. All I learned in the past, not even such a long time ago (see the above posts), seems not to be of much help to avoid struggle.

Right now I have plenty of time as my new system in in the middle of Adobe Organizer db update . I am just sitting and waiting it to accomplish the job. And praying that the result will be as expected. Well, not exactly in the middle, better to say it is approaching the mid point. It reached 37% update after 36 hours of continuous run! It is Monday, so I hope it would be due sometimes before the week end.

It is hard to understand this takes so long time when the new system has muscules to perform image edits in a fraction of second. Even the mighty new AI stuff. And that the restore with catalog copy and duly performed structure backup and images on the USB disk drive directly moved from the old to new PC (mapped to the same drive letter!) needs the rebuild process, which, with all the locaton meta data available, obviously executes a file by file search throughout the whole disk, again file by file, in order to reconnect. Is it all the contemporary IT science can do for the users?!

Well, I am aware that image processing is my hobby, but still I think that there should be somewhere a bullet proof, exact instruction that wolud need no IT expertise in order to get the job done to any (dumb) user. With all the respect to the people that try to help here in this forum and elsewhere, but I miss this bit of proffessionalism for this software.

Sorry for the post bad karma but at least it would let it go! 

Kind regards,

[Greg_S.]

I feel your pain.  I am in the middle of trying to replace my media storage partitions with new larger ones (as I have run out of space on the old ones).  The process is not easy.  I thought that cloning the old drive (with 2 partitions) to a larger drive, and changing the drive letters would work.  I was aware that the Organizer keeps track of media through a deeper identification of the drive and that I might have to do a deep DOS dive to copy the drive serial number over.  But that hasn't worked either.  It has been so many years since I last performed this operation that I didn't appreciate the difference between a drive serial number and a volume (partition) serial ID.  Although I was able to copy the drive ID, I have been unable to find an easy way to change the volume ID on Windows 11.  I have seen a couple of utilities that will perform this task, but I don't trust their source or that they will work on Win 11. 

In the meantime, I tried a traditional backup/restore.  That failed (with a crash) after about 18 hours of slow or non-responsive processing.  However, during this process, I did learn something new:  When trying to Find>All Missing Files, I discovered that any missing hidden files will not be displayed unless the grid is filtered to include those files.  (For various reasons, I have several thousand hidden files in my main catalog.)

I am currently awaiting some help from Adobe to resolve my situation.  I shall report back if I have anything useful to add.

[Tone42]

Hi Greg,

quite consolating to be notified that there is at least someone who understands my pain. Thank you. I hope that is the same for you in spite that you can not expect any constructive help from my side. Sorry for that.

In principle a restore procedure should simply restore. Period. But from what I am lerning this days is that the backup itself does not backup as expected. I say that because most of my backup sets do not have any *.tly files. I came across an info on the necessity of *.buc files, which are also missing. If only I think of the hours and hours spending in due backuping (no errors reported!) of the catalogs... but when the time comes to rely on them - they are a useless piece of crap.   

A year or so ago when I attempted to restore the catalogue to a rebuilt PC it ended up in a flat folder structure. I was convinced that this is due to my foult - lack to check up the cerresponding restore parameter (the only one that is there...). But I decided not to repeat the procedure but take the opportunity to rearange the folder structure. So I invested a lot of time in manual rebuilt of the complete catalogue. This time I was carefull about that but nevertheless the result was identical: flat structure!

Again, I hope that the actual update (reached 48% in the mean time) is the right thing. Searching fot solution by trial and error in iteration of several days is not very productive and turns what should be a pure pleasure and fun into a nightmare. I will report the otcome.

Kind regards,

[Tone42]

Hi,

it is 5 o'clock in the morning, 3 hours after I accidentaly noticed that the three day job ended up without a notice, at least 24 hours before calculated expectations,  and logged me out of  Windows. I logged in and found out that I can not fetch the data disk contents. any more. I could access the disk by runing explorer as the admin. But, reruning the Organizer revealed that the catalog thumbnails that were empty squares before are now showing up the appropriate images. However, the strusture appeared flat, and all the folders not containing at least one image were missing from the list. It all appeared just a tiny progress in respect of a muti day job effort.

To make the long story short:  now everything is fine, the folder structure fine and visible, everything like expected. What was missing was the selection of VIEW AS A TREE instead of the default VIEW AS A LIST next to My Foldres. Pufffffff & Yesssssss!

Now I deserve to go back to bed.

Cheers!

Kind regards,