Adobe Elements 9

Alan A&J

What computer operating system is your Premiere Elements 9 running on? Are you running the program from the 9.0.1 Update?

When you say that you loose files, are you saying that, when you re-open a previously saved/closed project, you are greets by the "Where is the file....?" message(s)? If no, what then?

Has the drive letter of the external hard drive changed on you at the time of these episodes?

Is this external hard drive formatted NTFS or FAT32? Are you frequently plugging and unplugging it?

Let us start here and then decide what next.

Thanks.

ATR

When you say "loose your video files," do you mean that they are disappearing from the external HDD, or that when you Open a Project, PrE asks "Where is file ____ ?"

If the former, then there is probably an issue with your external HDD. For the latter, see this article: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4598705#4598705

For some tips on using external HDD, see this article: http://forums.adobe.com/message/5567553#5567553

Good luck, and please let us know just a bit more.

Hunt

Alan

Just some add on questions....

What is the capacity of the external hard drive that is involved? At the time of these happenings, have much free spaces is left at that location?

What are the properties of the source media that you have stored on that external hard drive?

Specifically when does a link appear to be broken...

a. while you are working in the program?

b. when you are trying to import from external hard drive to Add Media/Files and Folders

c. other

Thanks.

ATR

Alan

First let us check out the external hard drive formatting. If you are on Windows, it should be NTFS, not FAT32. The switch is easy to do if that is the case.

Depending on how things go, create a new project, but, for this one, copy some of the external hard drive's .mp4 files to a desktop folder. Then import the folder into Premiere Elements with its Get Media/Files and Folders. Do some minor editing. Save/close the project. Re-open it a few times over the course of 48 hours and observe the "missing media" syndrome.

You might want to set up a control with copies of the same files in a folder on the external hard drive and a new project for that. Then you can run a side by side comparison at 12, 24, and 48 hours for this "missing media" happening.

Is it only one type of file that goes missing each time? Or is it just the .mp4 ones?  Or, does the problem hit the files randomly?

We will be watching for your progress when you get the time.

Thanks.

ATR.

The way that you prevent the lost media files from happening, is to assign a permanent drive letter to the external, in the OS. Then, the absolute Path will be retained.

Good luck,

Hunt

Hunt,

But, so far in this post, Alan has not yet caught that external drive changing drive letter.

I am looking forward to his results with the mini tests that I suggested in post 6 to help guide us on the path of discovery on this one.

ATR

Until the questions that I asked, in Reply #2 have been fully answered, I am not sure that we will know exactly what is the problem.

Hunt

Hunt

I think that we are after the same thing. We seem to have hit cyberspace symultaneously for posts 1 and 2 at 2:01 PM.

Signing off. Good morning.

ATR

Alan

Thanks for the update.

Glad to learn that all is working OK and the drive situation has been taken care of. Good job.

Please do not hesitate to ask if you have any further questions or need clarification on anything written here.

Thanks again.

ATR