PSE7 Backup catalog problem

[Finnkai]

I have a large number of still and some video in my PSE7 (around 20,000) and was attempting a catalog backup today on an external disk drive.

When the back up was preparing I got the message: "Photo files have been moved since they were imported into your catalog. Photoshop will not be able to find them and they will not be backed up. To ensure all files are properly located, select Reconnect before continuing with backup". If I ask it to reconnect it comes up with a huge list of "missing files" - far too many to reconnect manually.

This was a surprise because before I started the backup I had checked and all files were connected. However I notice that when I have the external drive connected (it has a previous backup of the catalog) PSE7 seems to get confused and claims files are "missing". If I remove the external drive and start PSE7 again all the files are "connected" again (that was quite a relief!). By the way I was not intending to do an incremental backup but a full backup to a new folder.

Can anyone explain this confused behaviour from PSE7? It is stopping me backing up the catalog.

[Steve Grisetti]

If you have files on an external drive, the program can sometimes report them as missing because Windows assigns a different drive letter to the drive each time it is connected.

The best solution is to Map Your Network Drive and permanently assign a drive letter to your external drive. You'll find the option to do this by right-clicking on My Computer.

As for reconnecting your "missing" files, the program is fairly intuitive. If you help it find a few of the files and it sees other missing files in the same folder, it should automatically reconnect them -- saving you having to manually reconnect each one individually.

The other option would be to tell the Organizer to remove any missing files from your catalog -- and then tell it to search your external drive for unmanaged media files (after you've mapped it, of course). Unfortunately, if you use this method, any Keyword Tags or Albums you've assigned to your media will need to be recreated.

[Finnkai]

Steve

Thanks for your reply. All my photos, video etc is stored on drives inside the PC and none are labelled as missing until I try to do the catalog backup to an external drive.

Is it not possible to do a "new" full catalog back up to an external drive without encountering this "missing file" problem?

I am really puzzled because it is only when I connect the external drive to do the backup that PSE7 seems to think all my files are now on the new (external) drive and reports them "missing". If I try to reconnect the "phantom" missing file with its original o9n my PC's internal drive it comes back saying it will not reconnect the file because it is already in the catalog. Can't understand what is going on!

[Steve Grisetti]

I'm sorry, Finnkai. It doesn't make sense to me either. I've certainly never experienced anything like this.

Are you sure your internal drives have all be permanently mapped? It sure sounds like Windows is automatically re-mapping your drives whenever you attach that external.

It might be worth contacting Adobe about your issues and see if they've ever seen it.

[Barb O]

Finnkai,

I suggest that you read this blog entry describing potential problems in PSE 7 if 2 volumes on your system have the volume serial number.

http://johnrellis.com/psedbtool/#_Detec ... blems_with

Note: The entry I referenced will discuss running a program to do analysis and potentially fix problems. The author of that analysis program has moved on to using Lightroom (from the PSE Organizer) so he probably will not be available. However, some of the actions he has suggested may be useful after your problem is better understood.

Barb

[Finnkai]

Barbara

Thanks for your suggestion. I have done some more research and found that PSE7 organiser gets confused as soon as I plug in this particular external drive whether or not I try to do a back up. I can have the organiser working fine and then as soon as this particular external drive is connected Organiser stops being able to find the files for my photos! The PC (running Win7 Home Premium) automaticvally assigns the new drive the next available letter and I can access the drive quite normally. When I redirect PSE7 to the correct file location it won't performa a reconnect because it says that file is already in the catalog (which of course it is).

It certainly seems as if this external drive somehow fools PSE7 into losing track of the original locations of all the photos. Will read the website you suggested!

Thanks again.

[Finnkai]

OK so I have now read John Rellis and used his tool to interrogate the catalog. The answer appears to be given by John as:

"Wrong serial number in catalog

The volume serial number recorded in the catalog for this volume doesn’t exist on this computer. PSE is instead accessing the volume using the drive letter that was associated with that volume when you first imported files from it. This may or may not be correct, depending on the situation.

If “Total files missing” for the volume is a large number, you’ve definitely got a problem. Perhaps you’ve moved your catalog to a new computer or reconfigured the drives in your current computer. See below for how to move files to new computers or drives.

If “Total files missing” for the volume is 0, then there’s probably not a problem. Perhaps you’ve moved your catalog and files to a new drive or computer, preserving the drive letter and folder structure of your files from the old drive or computer. For example, your files previously resided on drive D. You’ve added a new drive to your computer, moved all the files from D to the new drive, disconnected the old drive, and called the new drive D. This will continue to work fine, unless you later try to connect the old drive to the computer using a different drive letter. At that point, PSE will start looking on the old drive (because its serial number matches the serial number in the catalog’s volume table), and PSE will show all the files as missing."

I've underlined the piece that seems to explain my problem. The PSE7 has the wrong Volume Serial No. in the catalog for my files because it has somehow kept the number from my external drive (which I must have used to transfer the files when I built my new computer with new drives). As long as that external drive wasn't connected PSE7 managed to find the files OK because it looked for the drive letter (since it couldn't find a drive with the right volume serial no.). However when I reconnected my external drive to do the back up it saw the matching Volume Serial no. in the catalog and so looked on this drive for all my files.

So now I understand what's going on but I'm not sure I know how to fix it! Messing around with changing Volume Serial Nos on my drives might foul up other software. I may even follow John Rellis to Lightroom although I'm not sure if importing a PSE7 catalog with the faults above might just propagate the same problem! I guess I could just ask PSE7 to create a new catalog but with 21000 files I am concerned I might lose a lot of the metadata I have input. I think I'll sleep on it!

[Barb O]

The PSE7 has the wrong Volume Serial No. in the catalog for my files because it has somehow kept the number from my external drive (which I must have used to transfer the files when I built my new computer with new drives).

I am wondering if John Rellis' program can help you fix your catalog. I will investigate more tomorrow.

[Finnkai]

I thought I would post the solution to my problem.

As explained above, PSE7 catalog became confused when I connected the external drive that I had previously used to transfer my photos to my new computer. As John R Ellis explains this is because PSE7 looks first for the disk volume serial number and only when this cannot be found uses the disk drive letter to locate photo files. When the external drive was connected PSE7 found the volume serial number it expected and so assumed all the photos were on that drive (which they weren't). This meant I could not use PSE7 when that drive was connected.

My solution was to change the volume serial number of the external drive using the method explained by John R Ellis (see http://forums.adobe.com/message/2701334 for a very clear explanation). This has solved my problem.

Hopefully this might help others who encounter this strange behaviour.

[Steve Grisetti]

Thanks for reporting back, Finnkai!

[George Tyndall]

I have a large number of still and some video in my PSE7 (around 20,000) and was attempting a catalog backup today on an external disk drive.

I don't use the PSE7 backup tool as it's too cumbersome.

If your catalog, plus all the media that it controls, are on one internal drive (say, your C drive), you can use your Windows backup program (I use SmartSyncPro) to back up both the catalog and media to an external drive. Then, if ever your internal drive fails, you simply click on the catalog icon on the external drive and--voila--your catalog and media instantly reappear--with all your keyword tags, albums, etc, intact

By the way I was not intending to do an incremental backup but a full backup to a new folder.

That's what you'll get with the procedure I described.

Can anyone explain this confused behaviour from PSE7? It is stopping me backing up the catalog.

As Steve wrote, you need to assign a permanent drive letter to each external drive, which will override the predilection of Windows to assign differing drive letters each time you attach the same drive.

P.S. I keep only the OS and programs on my C drive. All data go on an external drive. Each time I make a change to the one external drive, I immediately back up the change to a second identical (but with a different drive letter) external drive. What this means is that at all times I have a current backup of both my PSE7 catalog and all the media that it controls.

The PSE7 catalog is the heart of my workflow, so I do everything I can to protect it, including controlling its size: Whenever the 2 "matching" 600GB external drives become nearly full, I purchase two new units and start new "matching" catalogs on them. All new media additions to the catalogs go on those same drives.

For more details, click on the following link:

http://muvipix.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4476&p=39185&hilit=organizer+backup#p39185

Steve, your "sticky" to that link somehow got removed. Can you "restick" it?

[Steve Grisetti]

Looks like it's there to me, George. Maybe someone else re-stuck it for us!