External drive and elements 2020

[Jd20204]

I have looked at quite a few different posts but nothing quite answered my questions...

I just started using Elements 2020. I imported three years worth of photos/videos from external hard drive A (roughly 30000)...it took a long time... I let the facial recognition run through everything and then I tried to do a backup on my external hard drive B but it got hung up at 93% and froze. It eventually kicked me out of photoshop. On B, there's quite a few back up documents but I'm not sure if it's all of them.
Now since I've imported these photos, my computer has been bogged down-running super slow. If I open photoshop, it takes such a long time. When it finally opens, I can't scroll without the colourful pinwheel showing itself for 2+ minutes before it loads a couple rows of photos. I thought maybe just the amount of photos. However, my external drive A seems to be running slower as well. It takes a long time to load the folders with all my photos. Today I went to try another back up and it said there were files missing. It ended up selecting all my photos. 
question 1) do I need hard drive A to be connected all the time in order for Organizer to access the pictures?

question 2) could this be why drive A is running so slow when it is connected? Because organizer is trying to access those files?

i have not updated or moved any files on hard drive A either..

Hard drive A had been formatted to work on macs alone. I took it to another Mac and it was taking its sweet time loading in Finder and eventually Finder froze. I then hooked it up to a PC and I could access every folder....I am beyond confused as to what has happened. I'm at the point where I want to uninstall photoshop because everything was working just fine until I imported my photos into it. 

if there are any suggestions...please let me know! Thanks!

[Jd20204]

I have Mojave on my Mac.

[Chuck Uebele]

Moved to the Photoshop Elements forum from the Photoshop forum.

[Greg_S.]

The answer to question 1 is definitely yes, and the answer to question 2 is probably yes.

There was a new update for Elements 2020 that was issued today.  Have you installed it?  It is supposed to fix a number of bugs with Mac computers.

[renator97884597]

io l'ho installato, non ho un pc mac, ho un windows 10...andava installato o era solo per i mac?  so che da ieri sera è tutto bloccato, elements 2020 non mi va più, arresto anomalo e...basta, mi esce sempre errore, si può fare qualcosa o ? grazie

[Jd20204]

Greg,

I wasn't able to find an update...??  even in the drop down menu in Elements...the update selection was greyed out.

[Test Screen Name]

Sounds as if you may have disk errors (failing disk). This is exactly like what’s I’ve seen when disks start to quit on me. Naturally these happen when using the disk a lot and naturally it seems related to software at first. Check Console for errors. Make sure, if I need to say it, everything in the disk is fully backed up before attempting anything at all. 

[Jd20204]

I'm starting to wonder about that now... However, I've tried to copy my data from this hard drive and it keeps giving me an error ".DS_Store file can't be read or written (error code 36)".. I've looked at the hidden files and I can't see this file anywhere... I spoke with Apple and the tech couldn't tell me what this error code was and he couldn't see any hidden folder that had this file in it. 

I'm wondering if I should uninstall Photoshop, since my drive was working just fine before I installed Photoshop.  I installed it on my internal hard drive.  Like I said before, I managed to get some of my catalog backed up (93%) onto an expansion hard drive and it stalled out and closed Organizer... Am I still able to access those photos as normal from the back up?  They look to have all the same information (shutter speed, f-stop, etc.) the only thing that is different is the filename.

The other thought I had was to uninstall Photoshop and recover from backup-will that give me those same photos with the old file names?

I've never done a backup with Organizer so I'm not sure what to expect...

Thanks!

[Test Screen Name]

.DS_Store is found in every folder written by Mac OS, but the Mac hides it completely. I know you want this to be software but it is getting more and more likely that it's a disk fault. Did you check the Console?

[Jd20204]

How many different ways are there to check the console?  I had and it said it was good but maybe there are other ways..? 

If it ends up being my hard drive A, can I still access those photos on hard drive B?  Sorry, I just want to know if I can get those photos still through my Backup with Organizer?

[Test Screen Name]

I think you must understand something different by "Console" than I do, the console never says anything is good. It's always full of alarming messages; what you're looking for is alarming messages mentioning disks, when you're trying to use the disk. This is the Console app in Applications/Utilities.