Cleaning hard drive

[rlpeeb]

Every 6 months or so, I clean my hard drive. I know I can save tags to a file to use for reinstalling Elements 5 with my previous tag organization after I restore my data files. Does anyone know how to do a similiar save and reinstall for my stacks?

[Barb O]

It seems that you have PSE 5, but you don't say what version of Windows.

this is a general answer that I think will apply to all the versions of Elements on Windows XP

You want to copy off and save the Elements Organizer catalog in order to preserve you stacks and version sets and PSE collection definitions etc. Also, not all file types can accept the Write Tags to Files data, so that might be an additional reason to preserve your catalog.

The default folder location of the Elements Organizer catalog is

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Catalogs

and you must enable viewing Windows hidden files in order to see it.

I recommend that you also copy off the folder

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Catalog Folders

So copy off those two folders and then bring them back.

If you also want to keep your Preferences, you will need to look under the folders for your Windows Userid in order to copy off and restore those. (Of course, you may already be preserving the Documents and Settings structure of your Windows Userid.)

[NickLewis]

Hi,

You could also use PSE's internal backup routine and then restore your files that way. That would preserve your catalog structure.

But can I ask why you are doing this routinely? It seems a tad excessive, certainly if you are running XP. If my installation was getting badly disrupted in that short a period of time, I'd be looking for the cause, and whether I could address it through routine maintenance.

My current PC has been in daily use for well over three years and I've never needed to rebuild it. In fact, its XP operating system build originated in an even earlier W98 machine via Me, and has never been reformatted or rebuilt (although it is now on a different physical disk). I have no performance issues. Although I have been thinking I might do a clean install if I go to Vista at some point.......

But if you really must reformat your operating system drive this frequently, then you might like to think about locating all your data files on a separate drive or partition, so that they wouldn't be affected by the reformatting.

Nick

[rlpeeb]

Thanks for your answer. That was simple enough. In regard to your question, I can't give you a good answer. I do download almost everything to give it a try and sometimes something screws my system up. Someone in my company's tech support told me it was a good idea to do this a few years back, so I'm now it the habit. What can I say, I'm just weird that way. :)
Thanks again