PSE 7 catalog error when restoring backup from PSE 5

Question

I am attempting to move from PSE5 on XP to PSE7 on Vista using the backup-restore method, . Catalog is about 75 MB, data set is 56 GB, all stored on external USB drive. Tried restoring in new folder using both with and without restoring folder arrangement.
On PSE 5, most images were online, scattered across E: partition and external USB disk. Restoring to PSE7, files are all restored to a new directory OK, but new catalog lists all files in E: as offline. Let me repeat... the images are moved into a new folder on the new system, but are shown in the organizer as still on a non-existent E: drive on the new computer.
I am left with thousands of untagged images, all of them ther newest and most important in my system.

Answer 1

Mahlon,
First, some additional questions:
1. Did you do File > Catalog > Recover and File > Catalog > Reconnect before doing the backup? Thats very important.
2. On the old computer, was E: a partition on an internal drive, an external USB drive, or a network drive?
3. In the restored PSE 7 catalog, are the suspect thumbnails shown with a yellow question icon in their corner or a red circle icon with a line through it (like the international power symbol)?
4. When you say files are still recorded in the catalog as being on the E: drive, is that as shown in Folder Location view in the left-hand folder heirarchy pane, in the center Folder Location pane, in the Properties pane, or all three? (Check all three, because sometimes PSE will show different drive letters.)
> This will take a dozen hours on the old system, and I'm skeptical that it will work. PSE7 already converts the PSE5 database in or out of the restore. But it can't correct the pathname on the old system to indicate that the files are local and not offline.
Recovering the PSE 5 catalog, reconnecting missing files, installing PSE 7, and converting the catalog to PSE 7 on the old computer should take about 30-45 minutes (doing a second backup will take much longer).
Converting the catalog on the old computer is different than converting it on the new computer. PSE 7 has a different catalog format than PSE 5 PSE 5 uses drive letters to identify hard drives, whereas PSE 7 relies on serial numbers, and the internal database format is completely different. When you restore to the new computer and try to convert the catalog at the same time, the conversion needs to both update the new paths of all the files
and convert from the old catalog format to the new one, changing drive letters to serial numbers. But when you convert to PSE 7 on the old computer, the locations of files and drives havent changed its just changing the database format. So its entirely possible that conversion will go correctly. Then when you backup the PSE 7 catalog and restore it on the new computer, backup/restore is just changing the paths of files, not converting from drive letters to serial numbers or changing database formats.
So thats why its quite possible (though not at all guaranteed) that converting to PSE 7 on the old computer and then doing backup/restore could produce different results different process, different results.
You have two other options, both of which might lose tags or other catalog information:
1. On your new computer in its current state, reconnect all the files in the catalog to their new locations. Because they are marked as offline (assuming they actually are offline, based on the answers to my questions above), the Reconnect command will tell there is nothing to reconnect. However, you can force PSE to reconnect offline files using a trick described in step 4 of this FAQ:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Quickly_reconnecting_la rge
This may or may not work, because its likely that the buggy conversion process has left your catalog in an inconsistent, unknown state, and there may be other problems still lurking. Also, persuading PSE to quickly reconnect whole folder hierarchies of files takes some patience (as youll see in the FAQ).
2. You can merge the PSE 5 catalog into a fresh PSE 7 catalog using this procedure: In PSE 5, save the tag definitions to a file, use File > Write Keyword Tag to write the keyword tags to the photos, copy the tag-definitions file and all the photos to the new computer using Windows Explorer, import the tag definitions into a fresh PSE 7 catalog, import the copied photos, and finally have PSE 7 automatically stack photos that used to be in version sets into stacks. These steps are described in detail in this FAQ:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Merging_Catalogs
This FAQ is written assuming the source catalog is in PSE 6 or 7, but I think it should also apply to a source catalog in PSE 5.
There are a number of problems with this. First, its time consuming. Second, youll lose version sets, stacks of photos that are *not* visually very similar or taken close together in time, collections (albums), and projects. The PSE File > Write Keyword Tag command has numerous bugs (in all versions), and youll most likely lose at least some, and perhaps much, of your tags, star ratings, captions, notes, dates/times, and GPS/map locations. If you have raw files in particular, youll very likely lose much or all of the metadata, but depending on the source of your JPGs and other file formats, those files could lose much information too. See the end of this FAQ for more details on the known bugs:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/#_Writing_File_Metadata