PSE 7 Organizer Database problems

[pweiss]

I am looking to move my very large PSE 7 catalog from an internal drive to the same hard drive in an external enclosure and then to a new computer. In the old days I could edit the the pse file with Access. I realize this is no longer possible with this version.

1) From what I have read, the database keeps the file locations by hdd serial number - does this serial number change when the drive is moved out of the pc?

2) I am also looking to migrate to a mac, since the mac version does not support the orgainzer, Again from what I read Lightroom will read the pse 7 catalog can this then be moved to the mac version? Can I accomplish the conversion using the free eval version of Lightroom and then buy the mac version.

3) Is there an easier way to accomplish this, I don't want to use PSE 7 in a Windows on the Mac.

Thanks

[johnrellis]

1) From what I have read, the database keeps the file locations by hdd serial number - does this serial number change when the drive is moved out of the pc?
The PSE 7 Organizer does identify drives by the volume serial number, which Windows assigns to a drive or partition when you format it. (It does not use the hardware serial number assigned by the manufacturer.) So if you move the drive to an internal enclosure and then to a new computer, the catalog will still contain references to that serial number and the catalog references to your files should still be valid.

2) I am also looking to migrate to a mac, since the mac version does not support the organizer, Again from what I read Lightroom will read the pse 7 catalog can this then be moved to the mac version? Can I accomplish the conversion using the free eval version of Lightroom and then buy the mac version
The online documentation for Lightroom 2 says that it reads PSE 6 and earlier versions; it doesn’t mention 7. One person recently told me that he couldn’t get LR to read a PSE 7 catalog. I did a quick search of the Adobe LR user-to-user forum and didn’t find any mentions of 7. There were a lot of postings about problems getting PSE catalogs converted, none of which looked particularly authoritative. But you could try posting there.

But you’ll probably get a better quality answer faster by downloading the free trial and giving it a spin on your PSE 7 catalog.