SENDOJ wrote:
Thanks - with regard to Michel's suggestion, I would note that my media files are in a number of folders, including some in a folder termed Adobe that I've copied over - so, would find it helpful to understand the folder structure / location of 'catalog'. I'd thought that a catolog was simply a set of paths to wherever the media files were storred, so that I could simply edit the pathway to the final destination (only the stem of the path differs as I've simply copied everything over). I take your point about reconnecing likely being long, but if I were to browse once to the correct location, would that not work. Or would I have to point it to the new locatoin for everyone of my several thousands of files? Much appreciated
You are partly right about the catalog.
It is a sqlite database which stores the paths of each media file. That enables the restore to be able to recreate the folder structure when copying the files from the backup folder.
Where it is not as simple as your schema is about how the paths are stored to take into account the various drives or volumes. You may have internal or external drives as well as 'offline' media such as CDs or DVDs.
The full paths from the root of the individual drives are stored as well as an id for the drive (drive letter + serial number).
The restore function of the Organizer can restore either on the original location, or in a custom location. In the last case, you tell the Organizer to restore the files under a master custom folder whose immediate subfolders are named from the names of the different drives. That is a marvellous way to move a catalog with media scattered on many different drives to a single drive without losing the folder tree.
Suppose you have copied the catalog (the whole folder containing the database catalog.pseXdb) to your new internal disk. The problem is to tell the database that the drive id has changed (provided you have restored the same tree structure). In the versions of the organizer since PSE6, each record for individual media includes an internal identifier pointing to a drive table where the real identity of drives are kept : letter and serial number. That means you can change a single record to update your catalog. That was what you were thinking ? Well you can do it if you use a sqlite database manager, but there is no way to do it from Elements.
The above solution works in many cases like yours (transfer from single drive to single drive) but there can be many traps.
Reconnecting has been greatly improved in PSE11, so that may be a good solution, For previous versions, see:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshop-elements-faq.htm#_Quickl y_reconnecting_large
Edit:
If you think you have tried everything, look at that other faq, particularly at Nr 8 for log files.
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshop-elements-faq.htm#_Proble ms_converting_catalogs
