Trouble restoring catalog backup

Question

Hello
Last week my hard drive died on me so I had to replace it and reinstall my operating system (Windows 7) and my programs.  I had
trouble finding my old Elements 6 install files so I decided to upgrade to Elements 9.  Before the HDD died I did do a catalog
backup of my Elements 6 pictures to an external hard drive.  After upgrading to Elements 9 I went to restore my Elements 6 catalog
only to find out I apparently had an original and an incremental catalog.  So after restoring the incremental part, Elements 9
asked for the location of the original .tly file.  Unfortunately I couldn't locate it so the restore operation was aborted.  I have
approximately 4500 pictures that I backed up on the external hard drive and as I had also stored them separate from the Elements
catalog backup I can get them back into Elements 9.  However, that means recreating all my tags, categories, subcategories etc all
over again for about 4500 pictures which is something I'd rather avoid.
So does anybody out there have a way I can just restore the incremental catalog backup or use the files created to at least get my tags, categories etc back?
Interestingly enough, there seems to be a lot of duplicate pictures with different file numbers in the Elements backup.  The pictures I have stored
independently is the the 4500 number, while the pictures on the external hard drive in the Elements 6 catalog folder amounts to
about 7300.  Why would that be?  In theory shouldn't they be very close to the same number?
While on the topic of Elements catalog backup, is there really any reason to do an incremental backup?  I tried a couple of
experimental Elements catalog backups:  the first was an original and the second I added a dozen pictures or so to the catalog and
tried an incremental backup.  I chose the same folder for the incremental as I used for the original.  I was asked if I would like
to overwrite and I responded yes.  I then found the .tly file in the next stage of the process and was then informed that I
couldn't use the same folder for the incremental as the original.  Why on earth not?  Although I initially I thought Elements 6 was
quite good, I have to admit this whole process has put me off the Elements program quite abit.  So if any of you know of a similar
product that does essentially the same thing as Elements I would be very interested to hear about it.
Many thanks in advance

Answer 1

Hi,
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The pictures I have stored independently is the the 4500 number, while the pictures on the external hard drive in the Elements 6 catalog folder amounts to
about 7300.  Why would that be
Some of the extra files should most probably be the breeze.xml files. These are created due to preprocessing of face data. I didn't quite get "duplicate pictures with different file numbers in the Elements backup" ?? . Do you mean they have numbers like -1 , -2 etc attached. If yes, then they exist mostly when you had ediited files present in Organizer. Since these are part of version sets in Organizer so theie count is not shown in Organizer but you see it in your backup.
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So does anybody out there have a way I can just restore the incremental catalog backup or use the files created to at least get my tags, categories etc back?
To restore the catlog, you will need to go to File>Restore catalog from ... , browse for the .tly file and hit restore.
Incremental backup comes into picture when you had taken the backup of catalog before. So next time, you make changes to catalog and wish to take a backup , you have the option for an incremental backup which backs up only the changes done in Organizer since the original backup was taken. Incremental backup builds on the original backup and hence its not allowed to overwrite the original.
Hope this helps. Thanks