Anything wrong with starting a new catalog

Question

I use PSE3. I have over 9,000 pics in My Catalog. I was thinking the turn of the year would be a good opportunity to begin a new catalog. But I vaguely recall that some think that's not a good idea. I can see that there could be inconvenience if I wanted to go into the first catalog frequently but my plan is not to. So is there any reason not to?

Answer 1

A 2nd catalog is usually not a good idea. It defeats the purpose of a catalog, and prevents you from do a search for photos when some of the photos you want to see are in the first catalog, and some of the photos you want to see are in the second catalog. By creating a 2nd catalog, you are basically creating more work for yourself, and in the future, there is no easy way to combine the catalogs should you decide to do so.
While there are some good reasons for creating a 2nd catalog (for example, you have completely non-overlapping sets of photos, such as personal and work), the fact that you now have over 9000 photos is a terrible reason to create a new catalog. I have 15K photos in my catalog, which works fine, and there are reports of catalogs with 50K photos that work properly.
A good idea to keep your catalog "healthy" is to compact it regularly. In PSE5, that would be done via File->Catalog->Recover. I don't know what the command is for PSE3.