In a tangle

[ColinT]

I've been using Elements 5 for over a year with no problems.
Having just bought an external hard drive ( Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive), mainly to back up photos, I transferred all my photos using the supplied Memeo Autobackup software.
I now find that a number of the images seem to have been corrupted (I get the "broken picture" icon) and some of the copied images have 0 bytes content.
In addition, I am unable to use the full edit facility and the sharpness of the original images has declined.
Having done what I thought was best to protect a precious collection of photos, I now find that I am in a much worse position than before.
Can anyone offer any guidance/advice on how to rectify this situation?
Many thanks.

[dj_paige]

If I understand what happened, Memeo Autobackup shouldn't affect anything, because it makes a copy of what is on your other hard drive. Your original photos should be right where they were before.

But, then you say you "transferred" the photos, indicating that you didn't make copies, you actually moved the photos.

So which is it? What did you do? (And did you move any photos outside of Memeo and also outside of PSE, for example, using Windows?)

If you moved the photos, move them back. Then, make sure that your software is actually making copies on the EHD, not moving them.

If you copied the photos, then there is really no way I can think of whereby you see these effects in PSE, unless the Memo program itself corrupted things. You probably need to go into Windows and verify that your photos are where you think they should be, and non-zero sized. If you can verify your photos are still properly found on your hard disk, write back, as there is probably an explanation that I can't think of right now.

Lastly, in the future, when you do a backup outside of PSE, you need to copy the PSE catalog file as well as the photos.

[Vasni]

On the chance that moving back a corrupted file will corrupt whatever is left of the original file, I believe I'd run an undelete program on the internal hard drive first to see if the photo files are recoverable. Assuming you have not used your hard drive extensively since you moved the files, the original files should still be intact. You can google for undelete programs, one such program is Undelete Plus.

Good luck, Vasni

[ColinT]

If I understand what happened, Memeo Autobackup shouldn't affect anything, because it makes a copy of what is on your other hard drive. Your original photos should be right where they were before.

But, then you say you "transferred" the photos, indicating that you didn't make copies, you actually moved the photos.

So which is it? What did you do? (And did you move any photos outside of Memeo and also outside of PSE, for example, using Windows?)

If you moved the photos, move them back. Then, make sure that your software is actually making copies on the EHD, not moving them.

If you copied the photos, then there is really no way I can think of whereby you see these effects in PSE, unless the Memo program itself corrupted things. You probably need to go into Windows and verify that your photos are where you think they should be, and non-zero sized. If you can verify your photos are still properly found on your hard disk, write back, as there is probably an explanation that I can't think of right now.

Lastly, in the future, when you do a backup outside of PSE, you need to copy the PSE catalog file as well as the photos.
Thanks for the response and sorry for not making it plain that the photos were copied to the external hard drive.
Would it help to uninstall and re-install Elements?

[dj_paige]

The symptoms you mention probably will not improve by un-install and re-install.

This did not occur to me in my first message, but you probably need to refresh the thumbnails before you do anything else. Select all thumbnails in the Organizer via Ctrl-A, then refresh the thumbnails via Ctrl-Shift-U, and see if your problems disappear. (This may take a long time if you have lots of photos, best to do this before you go to bed)

If you still have problems, then follow the advice in my first note, making sure the files are exactly where they are supposed to be (and not corrupted).

[moonchaser0]

I also have WD external hard drive I did not use the memeo to transfers my files to it i just used the right click send to option to send files to my WD book works fine for me, i tend not to use trial software that comes with hardware, i find it easier to use the old fashion copy paste. send to options this way no conflicks and i took my files off a thumb drive to my WD book hope this helps.