I have a large (25,000 items) master catalog in PSE8 which I want to copy into four smaller albums.

Question

How do I do this working from the master catalog in Organizer?
Thanks, Jim

Answer 1

It looks like it would be good.  Just be careful if you find some older pictures - and put them into, say the 1950-1974 album.  You have to remember to add them to the other catalogs.
Remember to back up your work.
Because their companies back up their office computers, many people forget to back up their home computers.  Make sure that you also apply the same backup care to your home files on your home computer. 
Martin Scorsese is a semi-famous TV writer and film director.  He recently had a home robbery.  They took his computer - and the external backup hard drive that was sitting next to the computer.  He had no other backup. 
More than 20 years of his writing is gone.  There is no way that he can replace that work.  The stolen external hard drive probably had a street value of $20.
If he had used a second external hard drive - which might have cost him a whole $50 - and stored it offsite, he still would have all of his work.  As it is, the vast majority of his work is gone forever.  That’s a big deal when you’re a professional writer!
I'm paranoid.  Every hour, a Macintosh utility called Chronosync automatically backs up all 70 gigabytes of my work - writing, music, and pictures - onto an external hard drive.  Twice a day, that same utility backs everything up onto a separate area of my laptop’s internal hard drive. 
Make sure your external hard drive contains more than just your work.  Put your operating system and applications on it.  There are special utilities (I use a Mac one called Super Duper) that will make that external hard disk an exact duplicate of your computer's hard drive.  You can't do that by just dragging all your files onto the new hard drive.  Some essential system files are invisible to you.  The external hard drive won't boot without these system files.
My external hard drives all are bootable, and contain all my current applications.  Each month, as part of my routine maintenance, I insure that each external hard drive gets updated to include everything that might have been updated or installed in my laptop during the month. 
If my internal hard drive fails, I just turn on my external hard drive and boot up.  Lost time - about five minutes.  Since I back up every hour onto my external hard drive, I'll lose an hour’s work - at most.  I can live with that.
Every Monday, I go to Bank of America's vault and open my safety deposit box.  I leave there the external hard drive I’ve been using all week.  I then take home the external hard drive that has been sitting in that safety deposit box all week.  If my house burns down - or if there is a robbery - the worst that can happen is that I'll lose one week's work.  Again, I can live with that.
I really don’t need the security of a safety deposit box.  When I was working, I would take my home backups to the office and store them there.  I also would take my office backups to my home and store them there.  Since I’ve retired, I really don’t have an offsite location to use, so I use a bank safety deposit box.  It’s overkill, but it works.
Be paranoid!  All computer hard drives will fail.  The only question is when.
What will you do when that happens to your hard drive?  Notice that I said "when that happens" - and not "if that happens".
Bob Leahy
Chief Executive Loafer
E-mail:  [email protected]