ACDSee Photo Manager 2009

Method of upgrading database from ACDSee 7 to ACDSee PM2009

• 

  Scuderiascot
  Member

  I am running ACDSee 7 and am considering upgrading to ACDSee Photo Manager 2009. I have a fairly large photo collection of approx. 20,000 photos, mainly on PhotoDiscs (CD and DVD) created via ACDSee 7.

   

  I also have a purchased copy of ACDSee 10 which I only installed on my young son’s laptop just for a look, although I chose not to bother upgrading my own PC to version 10.

   

  My question is, will I be quite safe in transferring my ACDSee 7 database directly to ACDSee 2009, or am I better to do this in 2 steps i.e. 7 to 10 and then 10 to PM2009?

  Posted On February 19, 2009 - 10:59 AM (9 months ago) (Permalink to this post)
• 

  Marc Sabatella
  Moderator

  Seems everyone has a different story.  What I'd suggest is doing a db backup as well as selecting all images then Database->Export->Database to a *text* file on the old version, which will give you the msot flexibility as you try options.  That is, if the conversion doesn't work whether done directly or via v10, importing the text file (and then rebuilding thumbs, which won't be fun if the images are on CD/DVD only and not also on live drives) will be your ace in the hole. And the backup protects in cause something goes wrong - not that the conversin process ever messes with your original db (it always creates a copy).

  Posted On February 20, 2009 - 04:05 PM (9 months ago) (Permalink to this post)
• 

  Heidi
  Moderator

  This is some good reading:

  What are the best practices when upgrading to a new version of ACDSee?

  and this..

  Problems w/ transferring Database to a new PC

  Posted On February 20, 2009 - 09:49 PM (9 months ago) (Permalink to this post)
• 

  Scuderiascot
  Member

  Thanks for the info, Marc and Heidi. I've now purchased PM2009, and tried the simple 'convert', which was only partially successful (seemed to copy some captions and thumbnails, but not all...!), so tried deleting the CDX files and 2 thumb files, but trying to convert that gave a 'database in use or corrupted' message; so went for Marc's text-file-via-the-Image-Well option, however it asks for my PhotoDiscs to be inserted (and also asks for some discs again later on e.g. insert disc 1, then disc 2, then disc 3, then disc 1 again, then disc 4, then disc 2 again etc etc.. what's going on?) I have 51 PhotoDiscs, so I don't think the Image Well method is going to be very practical! Is there another way of rebuilding the PhotoDisc information in the new PM2009 database?

  Posted On February 23, 2009 - 09:59 PM (9 months ago) (Permalink to this post)
• 

  Heidi
  Moderator

  in Marc's version you lost all the thumbnails so thus its asking for each disk to rebuild the thumbnails

  Even if you would have got the convert method working by deleting the thumb files I think you lost all the thumbnails and still had to insert the discs to rebuild the thumbs.  

  I don't know of any other way to rebuild the thumbnails easily for you.  Sorry...

  Posted On February 23, 2009 - 11:25 PM (9 months ago) (Permalink to this post)
• 

  Scuderiascot
  Member

  Marc, do you have anything to add to this?

  Is it perhaps possible to use the Image Well method for just 1 (or at least just a few) of my existing PhotoDiscs at-a-time? Otherwise, if I'm really going to have to do all 51 of them at one sitting, it will take me approximately 4 days non-stop!!!!!!!! (i.e. not paractical....).

   

  Posted On February 25, 2009 - 02:36 PM (8 months ago) (Permalink to this post)
• 

  Marc Sabatella
  Moderator

  Scuderiascot said:

  Marc, do you have anything to add to this?

  Is it perhaps possible to use the Image Well method for just 1 (or at least just a few) of my existing PhotoDiscs at-a-time? Otherwise, if I'm really going to have to do all 51 of them at one sitting, it will take me approximately 4 days non-stop!!!!!!!! (i.e. not paractical....).

  Unfortunately, I don't have any brilliant ideas, except to point out what by now may be obvious: having images that live only on CD/DVD is not a great long term strategy.  Look into external hard drives - they are quite cheap.  I use one external HD as my main image store, then I have DVD's as backup.  If the drive fails and I have to restore it from DVD, I'll deal with it, but at least ordinary db operations don't require me to dig out my DVD's.

  I do think you can probably rebuild the db in chunks as you surmise, but one way or another, you're going to have to insert each of those 51 discs if you want to rebuild the thumbs.

  Posted On March 1, 2009 - 12:24 AM (8 months ago) (Permalink to this post)
• 

  Scuderiascot
  Member

  Ok, thanks for the info guys (and gals!). I have now successfully moved my database from v7 to PM2009, so just for the record here's what I did -

  Firstly, I restored my v7 database from the backup (including PhotoDisc thumbnails) which I of course made before starting anything (phew!). I then uninstalled my new PM2009 and instead installed ACDSee 9 (not 10 as I erroneously quoted earlier in this thread) and converted the v7 database to v9 without any problems being encountered.

  I then uninstalled v9 and installed my new PM2009, then converted the database in the normal way. This was 95% successful in that all the Photo Disc information (including thumbnails this time) converted correctly, the only thing that was missing was my captions from the very small number of photos on my hard drive, which I simply manually re-typed in PM2009. This was no big deal as my photo collection is entirely on PhotoDiscs, only some recent photos awaiting filing were on my hard drive.

  Marc, I have noted your comments regarding the wisdom of using PhotoDiscs as my main storage method. I do actually have a 250GB external drive which I use for other purposes, but am now seriously considering just storing my photo collection on it (with appropriate CD/DVD backups of course) rather than using the PhotoDisc process.

  Posted On March 2, 2009 - 08:02 PM (8 months ago) (Permalink to this post)
• 

  Scuderiascot
  Member

  Marc (or anyone!), I have one question relating to storing my photos on an external drive:

  My external drive connects via USB, but does not always get the same drive letter assigned e.g. it is usually G: however if I already have another external device (e.g. a card reader) connected as well it may sometimes appear as H: or something else. Surely then, if my ACDSee database is expecting G: it will not find the photos under H:?

  Assuming this to be the case, is there some method of forcing my external drive to always be assigned to G: ?

  Posted On March 4, 2009 - 11:45 AM (8 months ago) (Permalink to this post)
• 

  Marc Sabatella
  Moderator

  Scuderiascot said:

  My external drive connects via USB, but does not always get the same drive letter assigned e.g. it is usually G: however if I already have another external device (e.g. a card reader) connected as well it may sometimes appear as H: or something else. Surely then, if my ACDSee database is expecting G: it will not find the photos under H:?

  I wouldn't be so sure. As far as I know, ACDSee uses the device id (a kind of serial number) as opposed to the drive letter for pretty much that reason.  I've never really paid attention to drive letters and have never had problems, but to be honest, I don't know if that's because my drives always *do* get the same letter for some reason or because ACDSee handles it.  Either way, though, it suggests it *can* work.  You might want to do some experimenting to see if the drive letter change causes problems before worrying about finding ways of making it the same all the time.

  Posted On March 4, 2009 - 04:33 PM (8 months ago) (Permalink to this post)
• 

  Scuderiascot
  Member

  OK, thanks for reply Marc, we'll see what happens!!

  Posted On March 4, 2009 - 05:20 PM (8 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

Subscribe to this topic via RSS

Reply

You must log in to post.