What's the best way to update file references after a move?

Question

I have a Photoshop Elements photo catalog with about 25k pictures all pointing to a network share I call \\thehive. I've moved, or sync'd if you will, all of the files in the \\thehive network share to a local storage drive for better performance which is now located at the P:\ drive. I plan to treat the P drive as my main drive that the catalog reads from, and use \\thehive network simply as a clone of the P drive which I plan to keep in sync using SyncToy. I already have all of this setup in place, files are sync'd on both the P drive and \\thehive, everything works as expected so far. But how to I go about updating the catalog so that it starts from the P drive instead of the \\thehive? A picture today is pointing to \\thehive\2008\somepicture.jpg and I need it to point to P:\2008\somepicture.jpg.
I'm a pretty advanced computer user so I can edit an XML file or do some advanced unsupported operations if I had to. Would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.

Answer 1

The fastest way is to directly change the values in the catalog.pse9db database.  The database is a SQL Lite database, so if you know (or know someone who knows) how to run SQL queries against a database, you're in luck because Adobe did an excellent job of designing a highly normalized database schema.
I highly recommend first trying this on a copy of your database.  In general, the procedure goes like this:
Add one of your images on the P: drive into the catalog.  This will establish a listing for the P: drive and its identification in the volume_table table.
Run a SQL query against the volume_table table to see a listing of all the rows.
Note the values of the "id" column for your "thehive" volume and the "P:" volume.
Run a SQL query against the media_table table to update the value of the volume_id column, replacing all instances of the "thehive" id number with the id number of your "P:" drive. The SQL query will look something like this:
Update media_table
    set volume_id = "<your new value>"
        where volume_id = "<your old value>"
I've tested this with PSE9.0.3 on Win7, changing the location from a CD on my E: drive to a USB stick on my F: drive.
Good Luck!
Ken