Backing up

[Marcie]

I have been successfully backing up my catalog for the longest time. Now all of the sudden whenever I select file backup it comes up with a memory error. I am not getting the screen to choose whether I want an incremential or full back up. :eek: Does organizer review the entire catalog prior to that? If so, that may be my problem. I have over 7000 pictures and scrappbooking stuff in it. If I move my scrappbooking stuff over to a new catalog, will I be able to use those in conjunction with my pictures in the editor? That may give me more room.

Here is to hoping I can get this program running so that I can continue to scrapbook. ;)

Thanks,
Marcie

[jodee]

Marcie, Yes you will be able to use anything that you put in different catalogs, just remember that a catalog doesn't move your pictures and scrapbook stuff to a new location on your hard drive, your catalog is only a pointer that brings up that picture. If you have that much stuff on your hard drive, and you are also backing up to your hard drive you may just be out of room on your hard drive.

I have all my scrapbooking stuff on an external hard drive, in several different catalogs, and the Elements organizer reads which ever cataloge I select, but all those items are still on the EHD, and if I were to make a new catalog and move any of them, they would still be on that EHD, and the organizer would just show you that picture, but the picture would still be on the EHD.

Gosh I hope that makes sense, I'm not the best at explaining things.

[Marcie]

Jo,

Thanks. That was a very good explanation. I do have all my pictures on a EHD and I do know that they are not actually in PSE5, but I did not know if I could have different catalogs and make them work together. I'm going to do it by year because most of them are of my children. Do you know if when you BU if you can put BU's of the different catalogs on one disk? A disk has 700 MB and two catalogs total only 600, are you able to put both on one disk? or do you keep separate ones?

Thanks,
Marcie

[jodee]

Marcie, I didn't understand that you had your pictures and scrapbooking stuff on an external hard drive, or that you were backing up to a disc. Maybe I'm not doing a proper back up of my external hard drives, because when I get new things I grab my disc of scrapbook stuff or pictures, which ever I'm wanting to copy to the disc, and I do a direct to disc copy of just those items before I move them to the EHD, and I don't finalize the disc until it is just about full, then I make it compatable and close it out. After I move my items to the EHD I do delete it from my hard drive. When I get more new stuff I just start over doing the same thing - copy it to a new disc, move it to the EHD, delete it from my computers HD. So I don't worry about backing up every thing every time. The other type of back up that I do is to copy all my zip files to a disc, that way if one disc fails, hopefully I can pick up what I need from the zip files.

[troush]

I think the Built in PSE backup backups up your Photos AND catalogs. Most people don't use it, as it hasn't been very usable.

I did want to warn you Jo Dee, that doing multiple writes to a DVD/CD can make them "unstable." A lot of people will download to a directory, and then when it gets close to 700 Meg (for a CD) or 4 Gig (for a DVD) then they back it up. But, you could loose stuff until you get that directory filled.

Check out the Adobe support forums for discussions on backups for photos and catalogs.

-Trish

[jodee]

Well, guess I've been lucky so far Trish, as I haven't lost anything, but it's a wonder I haven't. I have read about doing too many writings to a disc, but it is sooo easy to do it that way - lazy - I might add. Guess I'll have to be more careful in the future, and not push my luck.

Thanks for the reminder to be careful of this. Glad you're around to remind me to do it the right way. I do tend to live on the edge of danger. LOL

[Marcie]

Jo,

Sorry it took so long to respond, but I have been busy the last two nights. I had meant to put in my original question about the EHD and that I was backing up to a disc, but I had forgotten to do that. I was actually trying to back up my pictures that I had taken on my digital camera. The card for that holds 512 MB and I try to download those pictures as I take them, but I do not delete them from the card. Once the card get near full, only about 30 pictures left, and do one last download of the new pictures and then burn those to CD. I like using the organizer because I can do multiple burns to a CD. Since the first download usually uses about half a CD, then the second uses the second half. If it is a little too big then I just start a new disc. Since doing multiple downloads does cause some problems, I am only do two downloads on one disc. I then take those disc and double check them. If everything is alright, I immediately copy those again (only full ones) to a new disc. That way I have two copies of pictures off my computer and one copy on the EHD. THen I delete the pictures from the camera card. I have been told to get prints of my pictures so that in case something happens I could always scan them in. At the rate I'm taking pictures, we'd be broke. In the future, I will be going back and getting copies.

I have now taken your suggestion and moved all my scrapbooking stuff to a new catalog and also the first two years of my daughter's life to a different catalog. I can now use PSE5 backup feature again. I can go out a purchase more RAM to get more space on my computer, but that is not an option right now. I have also discovered that it takes PSE5 a shorter time to load now that the catalogs are smaller.

Thanks,
Marcie