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Post by Bailey on Feb 18, 2018 5:52:59 GMT
I am fully familiar with backing up and restoring entire catalogues in PSE and have done both when required, But I have always wondered if it's possible to restore just a single or selected files/images from a complete backup (I don't do incremental backups). Just today, I did another Google search to see if it's possible and all I can find is articles/tutorials showing how to make complete or incremental backups and complete restores. I can't find anywhere on the www any information on how to restore single or selected files/images. So I am pretty sure it's not possible. Can anyone confirm if it is possible to restore single or selected files and if yes, can you please explain how or point me in the right direction to information on the www. Thank you for your help  |
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Post by Peterj on Feb 18, 2018 16:27:46 GMT
I am fully familiar with backing up and restoring entire catalogues in PSE and have done both when required, But I have always wondered if it's possible to restore just a single or selected files/images from a complete backup (I don't do incremental backups). Just today, I did another Google search to see if it's possible and all I can find is articles/tutorials showing how to make complete or incremental backups and complete restores. I can't find anywhere on the www any information on how to restore single or selected files/images. So I am pretty sure it's not possible. Can anyone confirm if it is possible to restore single or selected files and if yes, can you please explain how or point me in the right direction to information on the www. Thank you for your help Not knowing your OS or backup software I found 2 possible solutions: MACWIN7 |
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Post by michelb on Feb 18, 2018 20:29:27 GMT
I am fully familiar with backing up and restoring entire catalogues in PSE and have done both when required, But I have always wondered if it's possible to restore just a single or selected files/images from a complete backup (I don't do incremental backups). Just today, I did another Google search to see if it's possible and all I can find is articles/tutorials showing how to make complete or incremental backups and complete restores. I can't find anywhere on the www any information on how to restore single or selected files/images. So I am pretty sure it's not possible. Can anyone confirm if it is possible to restore single or selected files and if yes, can you please explain how or point me in the right direction to information on the www. Thank you for your help The answer for catalog backups from the organizer is ... NO. However, if you are in a situation where you can't restore a catalog because the backup.tly file is missing, you can try the following method. All media files are renamed like 'B0000000.jpg', so their original name is lost. The 'date_taken' is the same as the original. That is a way to sort your files in the backup folder from your explorer. If you have 'written metadata to files', the copies still keep the tags and captions. You could create a new empty catalog and import the copies. That would recreate the thumbnails and recover the tags and captions. Suppose you only know the year of the missing file, you could import only the files from that year. That would make importing and searching much faster than a full restore. |
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Post by Bailey on Feb 19, 2018 1:20:44 GMT
Not knowing your OS or backup software I found 2 possible solutions: MACWIN7Thank you for your reply Pete. I am using Win 7 Home Premium on my desktop and Win10 on my laptop. Unfortunately the information in your win7 link talks about the Windows Backup and Restore. I am talking about the PSE backup/restore I do onto a separate external hdd using the PSE Organiser. I would prefer to not have to make an additional backup to the PSE backup. |
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Post by Bailey on Feb 19, 2018 1:32:13 GMT
The answer for catalog backups from the organizer is ... NO. Hi michelb, Thank you for confirming what I thought was the case. The typical scenario I am thinking of is if someone unfortunately deletes an image file from their normal storage folder, it would be nice if they could restore it from their backup folder (on external hdd or wherever) without doing a complete restore to a temporary area. I understand the reason why files are renamed to B0000..... on the backup, but when the backup files are restored they are given their original names. So the correlation between the original and backup filename must be stored somewhere in the backup. If I can get access to the correlation, I could then simply look up the file name of the backup file of the file I want to restore and then copy the backup file from its backup folder to its original folder. Is there any way I can get access to the correlation between the original filename and its backup filename? |
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Post by michelb on Feb 19, 2018 7:55:20 GMT
The answer for catalog backups from the organizer is ... NO. Hi michelb, I understand the reason why files are renamed to B0000..... on the backup, but when the backup files are restored they are given their original names. So the correlation between the original and backup filename must be stored somewhere in the backup. Yes, the correlaion is stored in the backup.tly file in the backup folder. The problem is I don't know how to read the .tly file format. It's not a common database format; if you browse it from a text editor, you'll have an idea. The significant data you can find for each media file in your Explorer are the date and perhaps the size. My suggested solution is mainly a way to restore from a backup folder without the backup.tly; it's not uncommon for users to have incomplete backups; the backup.tly file is the last one saved in the process. You lose the original file name, but you recover the image and its tags and captions. Note that incremental backups have an advantage here: you can restore to the situation when any incremental backup were made. Otherwise, the missing files may be absent from the latest full backup. |
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Post by Bailey on Feb 19, 2018 11:21:20 GMT
Yes, the correlaion is stored in the backup.tly file in the backup folder. The problem is I don't know how to read the .tly file format. It's not a common database format; ... I can open up the .tly and .buc files in Notepad and Wordpad. But both being binary files, it's unlikely I would get anything useful when viewed in a text editor. In the .tly file I see lots of text which doesn't contain the information I am after. In the .buc file I see some SQL code (which I am very familiar with from my Oracle days) but it isn't what I am after either. Knowing Adobe, I would be surprised if both files are not in some sort of Adobe proprietary format. If someone ever needs to restore a single or selected files from a backup, the only way possible seems to be to do a a full restore to a temporary area, find the files they need and then copy them to their original locations and finally re-import them into the PSE Organiser. |
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Post by michelb on Feb 19, 2018 19:42:54 GMT
Yes, the correlaion is stored in the backup.tly file in the backup folder. The problem is I don't know how to read the .tly file format. It's not a common database format; ... I can open up the .tly and .buc files in Notepad and Wordpad. But both being binary files, it's unlikely I would get anything useful when viewed in a text editor. In the .tly file I see lots of text which doesn't contain the information I am after. In the .buc file I see some SQL code (which I am very familiar with from my Oracle days) but it isn't what I am after either. Knowing Adobe, I would be surprised if both files are not in some sort of Adobe proprietary format. The .buc file is a simple renamed copy of the catalog.pseXXdb sqlite database. The thumbnail cache and face recognition files are also sqlite databases. Only the .tly file contains the cross list between the original and the renamed copy. My guess is that the .tly format is kept for compatibility with older versions. |
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Post by Bailey on Feb 20, 2018 9:28:49 GMT
It would be nice if Adobe would add a function in the Organiser that allows the user to restore a single file. It should be a quick and simple feature to code up. At its most basic, a dialog box could pop up prompting the user to enter the filename of the file they want to restore and where they want it restored. The Organiser would then user the filename in a simple SQL query to find the file's record in the backup and then finally copy the backed up file to the user's specified restore location and rename it to its original file name.
But assuming the Organiser's Backup/Restore function has been available since at least the very early days of PSE and that I am not the first person to bring up restoring single or selected files, I doubt Adobe are planning to introduce the feature any time soon.
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