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Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

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Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby George Tyndall » Sat Jan 10, 2009 12:21 pm

Background: Because PSE7 can send slide shows to PRE7 but PSE 4 cannot, I would like to use PSE7 for at least some of my slide shows. The
reason is that PRE7 is capable of doing some very impressive things with slide shows.

Problem: I've been reluctant to begin using PSE7 because of PSE4's known capability to effortlessly back up the Organizer, which contains
nearly 20,000 items. I decided to search for a similarly effortless method of backing up PSE7's Organizer.

Method: Just as I've always done with PSE4, I created 2 copies of the PSE7 Catalog--and all images that it contains--one copy on each of
2 different external HDDs. The second copy is created not directly fromm PSE7 but rather by synchronizing the 2 external HDDs with a program
called SmartSyncPro. I then set out to try various methods for recovering the PSE7 Organizer from the second (backup) drive, however, this did not
take long as the very first method that I tried was, quite surprisingly, hugely successful.

Procedure for Recovering Your Organizer from Your Backup HDD When Your Main HDD has crashed:

Simply double-click on "catalog.pse7db" in whatever folder you've placed your catalog and--voila!--the PSE7 Organizer immediately opens up with all your
Images, Albums and Tags in place just as if nothing has happened.

This is a very pleasant surprise, indeed!

\:D/


UPDATE: IN FACT, ONE MUST STILL RELETTER THE DRIVE--SEE MY DECMEBER 12, 2012 POST BELOW.
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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby Steve Grisetti » Sat Jan 10, 2009 12:39 pm

I've taken the liberty of making this valuable post a sticky. Thanks, George!
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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby codebreaker » Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:17 pm

I think that a little caution is needed with this approach if and when you need to restore a backup.

I believe - just going from memory - that the Catalog actually records the Folder Location of the images along with the Drive Volume ID. On earlier versions the Catalog used to use the Drive Letter (D\;E\ etc.)

This means that if you restore your Catalog and Images to a new hard drive, you may find that the images cannot be found because the new drive has a different Volume ID, created when it was formated, from your original drive. You'll then need to change the Volume ID on the new drive to that of the old one - or edit the database file which is the Catalog.

The reason for Adobe changed from Drive Letters to Volume IDs was to allow External Hard Drives which contain the Original Images to be moved from machine to machine. The Volume ID stays the same but the Drive Letter may well change.

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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby Barb O » Mon Jan 19, 2009 4:15 pm

Hi Colin,
This means that if you restore your Catalog and Images to a new hard drive, you may find that the images cannot be found because the new drive has a different Volume ID, created when it was formated, from your original drive. You'll then need to change the Volume ID on the new drive to that of the old one - or edit the database file which is the Catalog.

That is a very good point.

Related FYIs
Other considerations that are also related to mananging the PSE Catalogs in PSE 7 are :

My recommendation is that you never have multiple drives with the same volume identifications on a system with Photoshop Elements 7 -
Because PSE is using the Volume ID to identify the drive, it will have problems if there are 2 (or more) drives on your system which have the same volume serial number : for example, this can happen with some software used to Clone a drive, so the id should be modified before using the cloned drive on the same system.

Lastly, I will mention that I have never seen Adobe endorse the approach of double clicking the "other copy" of the catalog on a different drive in order to recover. Of course, people do make it work, so I suggest that people use this comment merely as part of their evaluation of their own procedure.
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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby George Tyndall » Mon Jan 19, 2009 4:37 pm

codebreaker wrote:The reason for Adobe changed from Drive Letters to Volume IDs was to allow External Hard Drives which contain the Original Images to be moved from machine to machine. The Volume ID stays the same but the Drive Letter may well change.Colin


Hi codebreaker.

I am aware of what Adobe did and why--and that is the exact reason that I stayed with PSE4 over the years. With PSE4, when my Lead Drive L crashed, with my 15,000-image Catalog and the subject images all on that one drive, and the drive was not recoverable, all I had to do was go to my identical external backup HDD, rename it from Drive X to Drive L using the Windows Drive Management function, and my Organizer was up and running, with all my Tags and Collections intact as if nothing had happened, in a matter of seconds.

With PSE7, if you store your catalog and all the items that are in it on one external drive, then make an exact backup of that HDD to another external drive, all the while leaving the actual PSE7 program on the C Drive, one can restore one's damaged catalog from the backup drive immediately, without any renaming or relettering.

Note: You open any of the catalogs by double-clicking on the file that I stated in my post and NOT from within the PSE7 program (File>Catalog).
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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby George Tyndall » Mon Jan 19, 2009 5:56 pm

Barb O wrote:My recommendation is that you never have multiple drives with the same volume identifications on a system with Photoshop Elements 7.


Hi Barb O

I am not aware of any method of having two different drives with the same serial number, but if that is possible, I completely agree with you that they should not be used on the same computer.

But think about this: If you wish to open an MSW document, you may either open it from within the program, or you may double-click on the document itself on, say, an external drive--which will result in the MSW program itself opening simultaneously, from the C Drive, with the opening of the document.*

Currently, my PSE7 catalog is on Drive N. When I open the Catalog Manager (File>Catalog), I am informed that I have a Catalog at a Custom Location, N:\PSE7 Catalog (PSE7 catalog is the name I gave to the folder on Drive N in which I store the catalog).

I have another external drive, Drive O, that is an EXACT COPY of Drive N, in other words, I have it fully synchronized with Drive N, using a program called SmartSyncPro.

If I open Drive O from my desktop, I see there a Folder named N:\PSE7 Catalog. If I double-click on the file within the folder named "catalog.pse7db," PSE7 immediately opens from my C Drive. Now, when I open the Catalog Manager, here is what I see at the Custom Location for this EXACT COPY of the catalog that is also on Drive N: O:\PSE7 Catalog.

In short: Just as one may have multiple copies of an MSW document on as many external drives as one wishes--and double-clicking on any one of them will open the MSW program from the C Drive--one may have as many copies of his catalog, and the associated images, on as many external drives as one wishes.

Whether or not intended, it is wonderful that Adobe has made it possible to effortlessly back up one's catalog. This is the chief reason that I now feel as comfortable using the PSE7 Organizer to keep track of all my images as I ever did with PSE4.
____
*Another example: I have 5 identical copies of my iTunes library on 5 different external drives--but only 1 copy of the program itself on my C Drive. If ever Drive N crashes and the 2500-song library on it is lost, all I need do to have iTunes up and running "in a snap" (hi Chuck and Steve) is to open up any one of the other identical copies.

Although no system is "bullet-proof," if one keeps only the programs and OS on one's C Drive then makes a mirror image of that drive when everything is working perfectly--and one keeps all one's data in mulitple copies on external drives--one can sleep pretty well in the sense of not having to worry, too much, about having one's work flow interruped by the crash of a HDD.
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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby Barb O » Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:26 pm

George,

Yes, I do realize that you can have many copies of the same file contents with the same file name in different folders on the same or different hard drives. And I have worked with people on forums who have recovered their Elements catalog by the doulble click on the catalog copy "elsewhere" method.

My specific point is that I have never seen Adobe say that their design of the Elements catalog database and other relevant PSE data supports this method.
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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby Bob » Tue Jan 20, 2009 1:49 am

An observation from a different perspective...

I'm not a current user of Organizer, but I used to be. Back from when it was a standalone product called Album through when it was rolled into Photoshop Elements 3 and became Organizer. One of the design features that it had from the beginning was that it supported multiple catalogs. You weren't restricted to only one catalog that held everything, you could, if you wanted, create one for work, one for personal, one for the kids, etc.. Organizer would default to the last catalog you used, but you could change to a different catalog at any time from the Organizer Catalog Manager (if the catalog manager knows about it) or you could double click on a catalog in Explorer and it would launch Organizer using that catalog.

It seems to me that what George is doing is simply using this multi-catalog capability. It's just that in this case, instead of multiple catalogs with separate content, he has multiple catalogs with the same content. If you use this approach, you need to keep the catalog databases synced. Organizer won't do that.
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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby RJ Johnston » Tue Jan 20, 2009 3:41 am

I agree with Bob. It's standard Microsoft technology to be able to double-click icons of documents and databases and such and then have the application open represented by the icon. You don't need Adobe's permission. Adobe may not have explicitly stated it, but they did state it when they made an entry in the Registry associating the .pse7db extension with the Photoshop Elements 7 application -- "open this application when you double-click a file with this extension."
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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby codebreaker » Tue Jan 20, 2009 3:29 pm

With PSE7, if you store your catalog and all the items that are in it on one external drive, then make an exact backup of that HDD to another external drive, all the while leaving the actual PSE7 program on the C Drive, one can restore one's damaged catalog from the backup drive immediately, without any renaming or relettering


George....

I'm still not clear on this. If both your external hard drives contain identical images and identical Catalog files, you'll still run into problems with a restore. Each Catalog will refer to the same Volume ID and this may not be the same as the Hard Drive to which you do the restore.

Maybe I'm misunderstaning exactly what you are doing. :???:

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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby JohnnyO » Tue Jan 20, 2009 7:36 pm

With PSE7, if you store your catalog and all the items that are in it on one external drive, then make an exact backup of that HDD to another external drive, all the while leaving the actual PSE7 program on the C Drive, one can restore one's damaged catalog from the backup drive immediately, without any renaming or relettering


This is a true fact, as I have restored my catalog and all photos successfully from my external drive.
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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby codebreaker » Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:47 am

Well I'm confused even more now :-)

When I tried this with PSE6 it would not work because of the Volume ID differences. I've just made a test with PSE7 and it worked despite Adobes KB indicating that Volume IDs are still used to identify the drive.

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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby George Tyndall » Wed Jan 21, 2009 8:53 am

codebreaker wrote:I've just made a test with PSE7 and it worked despite Adobes KB indicating that Volume IDs are still used to identify the drive.Colin


Yes, whether intentional or not on the part of Adobe, if one relies heavily on one's Organizer to keep track of all one's images, this is really great.

And here is another reason that it's essential to be able to conveniently backup one's Organizer: Some Creations originate there. For example, with PSE4 one can create beautiful calendar pages from the Organizer, but later versions do not offer that capability. Luckily Adobe makes it possible for a user to keep and uses 2 or more versions of the program on the same computer, and that is why I now use both PSE4 and PSE7.

HOWEVER, if you are going to use 2 different programs and the 2 different Organizers then you MUST be sure to keep the images associated with each catalog separate from one another because, once you've openend a given image with a newer version, it will be difficult to open that same image with an older version of Elements.*
____
*In my case, I have 2 separate external drives, one for my PSE4 catalog and images (Drive L) and another for my PSE7 catalog and images (Drive N). Each of those external drives, of course, is regularly (every time I shut down my computer) synchronized with another 2 external drives (Drive M and Drive O).

In addition, both Drives L and N have MIRROR IMAGES of my C Drive on them, which I created with Acronis True Image Home.
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Re: Instantly Recovering Your PSE7 Organizer

Postby George Tyndall » Wed Dec 12, 2012 12:59 pm

With regard to instantly recovering one's PSE7 Organizer, I wrote above:

Hi codebreaker.

I am aware of what Adobe did and why--and that is the exact reason that I stayed with PSE4 over the years. With PSE4, when my Lead Drive L crashed, with my 15,000-image Catalog and the subject images all on that one drive, and the drive was not recoverable, all I had to do was go to my identical external backup HDD, rename it from Drive X to Drive L using the Windows Drive Management function, and my Organizer was up and running, with all my Tags and Collections intact as if nothing had happened, in a matter of seconds.

With PSE7, if you store your catalog and all the items that are in it on one external drive, then make an exact backup of that HDD to another external drive, all the while leaving the actual PSE7 program on the C Drive, one can restore one's damaged catalog from the backup drive immediately, without any renaming or relettering. [bold emphasis added]


That is incorrect.

In fact, whether PSE7 or PSE11, I've just discovered that, if one does not reletter the backup HDD, then one will need to reconnect all the files that the Organizer is keeping track of, which could be very time-consuming.

In other words, whether PSE7 or PSE11, one needs to follow the same relettering procedure that I described for PSE4 earlier in the quotation, if one wishes to instantly recover one's Albums, Tags, etc. in seconds as if no crash of the primary HDD had occurred.
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