Move Photos to second hard drive PSE 3

[evadeck]

I have searched this forum but am not clear on a procedure using PSE 3. It appears to be very complicated and most of the information I found in the forum refers to later versions of PSE. I like PSE 3 :)

I have 50G of 7000 photos, in 201 folders. I have no interest in preserving Tags and I only use collections as a temporary hold for making a slideshow for which it is very useful. After the slideshow is created and saved as a PDF, I delete the collection. I also find my old tried and true method of organizing by labeled folders and subfolders works better for me than tags. I don't use version sets.

Now I want to buy a second hard drive, internal, to place the photos in with their folder structure and I would like PSE 3 Organizer, which will continue to reside on my C: drive, to find the photos on the second drive.

I can't use the File/move feature in the organizer because it is greyed out in PSE 3. Is there a simple way of moving My Pictures to a second drive with Windows Explorer, deleting the PSE catalog and letting it make a new catalog from My Pictures on the second drive? The thought of manually moving 7000 photos with Organizer isn't very appealing.

I hope I have made myself clear. If this has been answered, please point me to the answer.
Thanks. Eva

[Karin Sue]

Since you have no version sets, stacks, tags or collections etc that you want to preserve I don't see any reason why you can't just move everything with windows and start fresh with a new catalog.

I do think you are missing out if you ignore tag potential and just use folders for organizing. If you get a chance check out the Michael Slater book on Organizer--booksite: www.photofanatic.com. The free excerpts are worth reading even if you don't get the book.

Your file>move shouldn't be grayed out. Was there an active selection when you accessed it?

I used file>move when I moved all my photos to an external drive. I used that as an opportunity to refine my folder scheme as I like to use both folders and tags.

[evadeck]

Karin, thanks for the reply. In an effort to move a whole folder with sub folders, I highlighted the folder in Organizer. But file|move is not available. I can move individual photos or groups of photos within a folder or sub folder, but not a whole tree. With 201 folders, that is very tedious, though I could do a dozen or so a day if I had to. I see that you have PSE 2 which does not have Organizer I think.
Eva

[Karin Sue]

I have PS Album 2, Album is the separate program that they renamed Organizer when they smooshed it into Elements. I often refer to my Michael Slater Album 2 book. I really like the way Album (Organizer) works most of the time.

I don't think the ability to move folders was added till v5. I think v5 is when I first read about drag & drop of folders in folder view.

If you want to maintain your catalog in v3 I believe your options are:

File>move one folder's worth of images at a time

Backup, then restore to the new drive

Move them in windows, then use reconnect all and have patience

Move them in windows, then use Access (or free open office equivalent) to edit the data base to change the path name. (.psa file, work on a copy)