Moving a Photoshop Elements 3.0 Catalog -- Restore Fails

Question

I have tried to use the back-up / restore-to-new-location method to move a PSE 3.0 (Windows XP) catalog from my hard drive to a mounted network drive (Seagate Black Armor NAS 220).  The backup works correctly, but the restore doesn't quite work.  The files do get copied to the new network drive location appropriately, both using and not using the full former directory structure, but the catalog file that is created still references the original hard drive locations of the files.  I also tried this after (finally) adding the PSE 3.0.1 patch as well, with the same results.
It is hard to believe that an issue like this wouldn't have ever been  fixed.  Has anyone successfully moved a catalog in 3.0/3.0.1 via this method, or has anyone else seen this issue?  Are there any fixes or alternate methods out there?
Being that the .psa catalog files are Access databases (in the old versions of PSE), I'm about to try directly updating the catalog file for the correct locations, since I can do it fairly easily (i.e. via SQL instead of file-by-file location updates)., but I still think there has to be a way to do this without resorting to modifying the catalog file directly.
Thanks,
Doug Newton
[email protected]

Answer 1

Doug,
First I want to say that I have no idea how effectively PSE 3 will process a catalog or the photo files residing on a Network drive. I mention this explicitly to that you do not interpret any other comments that I make as encouraging you to run from the Network drive with PSE 3.
I have more expereince with this in PSE 4 when periodically using a Backup and Restore scenario to take a catalog and photo files from a desktop machine to an old laptop. 
What I did experience was that if photo files were still referenceable at the previous folder location then the PSE 4 Restore command did not update the PSE Catalog pointers to the new folder location. This symptom does appear to be similar to your current problem with PSE 3.
Therefore I changed my process to make the previous folder location not referenceable (even with any automatic adjustments that for userid differences on different machines that PSE Restore would make) before doing the Restore command.  That did solve the problem of the catalog pointers to the photo files of the restore not being updated.
In your case, since you say you know how to do the SQL to adjust the catalog database, that might be a good option. Otherwise you could delete what was placed on the Network drive, make the original photo file folders not addressable and then do the PSE 3 Restore again.
A general but I think important comment.
Usually I do not recommend people upgrading to a new version just for the sake of upgrading. However in your case, you are running version 3 (which was the very first version which had the Organizer combined in to Photoshop Elements) and yet you are expanding your use of Windows operating system functions to practices common now but not common for consumers back in 2004 when PSE v3 was first available.  
Therfore I suggest that you consider upgrading your version of Photoshop Elements.
I am not saying go to PSE v8. PSE 7 does seems to be still available from reliable sources.  Some people still run PSE 5.