New computer

Steve Ohio

I am getting a new computer. All my photos and .ini files are on a stand alone auxiliary drive. Can you please tell me if I make a copy of c:/Users/%3CUserName%3E/AppData/Roaming/tonfotos and then overwrite the default same after reinstalling the program if I will lose any info?

Andrey

Steve Ohio Can you please tell me if I make a copy of c:/Users/%3CUserName%3E/AppData/Roaming/tonfotos and then overwrite the default same after reinstalling the program if I will lose any info?

I don’t recommend doing it, this is not tested and not supported function. We cannot guarantee that program will function correctly after this.

In ordrer to transition safely, you will need:

1) Make sure you turned on storing dossier of people to your external drive in Library locations, while your drive was attached.
2) Install application on another computer (don’t activate it yet with serial number), attach your drive and let it start indexing your photos. If everything went well on previous step, you will see that all people will get picked up by your new computer from dossier file. That means you can get now to the next step.
3) Uninstal software from your old computer, that will free up your activation.
4) Activate Tonfotos on new computer using same activation key.
5) Wait for indexing to finish.

That’s it. this is how you transfer all information about your people to the new PC.

Steve Ohio

Andrey,

I’m am not sure what you mean when you say turn on storing dossier of the people on external drive. I currently use the drive as my library location. Is this all I need to do or is there a function i need to perform to “turn it on”?

Andrey

Steve Ohio I mean turining on this feature in Library locations dialog:

More about this function here: https://community.tonfotos.com/d/186-version-150-people-data-synchronization

Steve Ohio

Andrey,

I’ve been away from Tonfotos for several months. After reading the accompanying “more about this function” link, this appears to be a newer (and welcome) feature in the program since I last used it. I will turn it on!

Thanks!
Steve

MattS

I have something like this, but my old computer that I installed Tonfotos on has the images on the C: drive, not an external USB drive.

Can I move the photos somehow and repoint the folders for searching without losing all the naming and “confirming” that I have done so far?

If I can do that, then I can follow your steps above to transition to my new computer.

I just read a little further and I do not yet have the Dossier turned on.

Andrey

MattS You can definitely move your image files, if you keep all accompanying ini files when moving folders, then your face-people associations will be picked up again. However, you will have to perform images indexing once again, you can’t just point the program to the new location, this will be similar to adding new location.

And yes, turning on Dossier feature is a must in this case. Just remember, that people.tnfp file should always be in the root folder of your archive. Keep that in mind when you move your files.

MattS

Andrey

Hi, I just looked, briefly, and the only Tonfotos files I seem to find is that each directory has a .tonfotos file. I don’t see an .ini file. I don’t see a people.tnfp file either.

One of the library locations with most of the photos is C:\Users\Matt\Pictures. In the libraries view area, of the four options at the bottom of the Manage photo library locations, everything is on except, right now, for “Store dossier of people”.

So is the lack of .ini and people.tnfp files due to this checkbox not being on, or am I missing something?

Thank you for the quick responses!

Andrey

MattS the only Tonfotos files I seem to find is that each directory has a .tonfotos file.

Probably your file explorer just hides .ini extensions. Those are the right files - .tonfotos.ini, and they should be in every directory where you market people on photos.

MattS I don’t see a people.tnfp file either.

This one will appear when you turn on Dossier sync function. So make sure to turn it on before moving library.

MattS

Andrey
Andrey, thanks for the response. Your support is fast and awesome.

Ok, on the old computer, I went into Window Explorers and changed one of the options. So the file I was seeing that was called .tonfotos now shows up as .tonfotos.ini.

Just to confirm, before I try to copy all the photo directories to the new computer, I will turn on the Dossier function on the old computer right?

Once I do that, is it clear how long I need to wait for Tonfotos to do anything in the background before I copy all the folders to a thumb drive to move to the new computer? There are over 10,000 photos in this folder of folders of photos.

Once I move the photo directories to the new computer, and install Tonfotos on that computer, I assume I also turn on the Dossier function on the new computer right?

I see in this email chain that I need to uninstall the old Tonfotos first before activating the Tonfotos on the new computer.

When I copy the old computer photo directories to the new computer, it will be copied into a “Pictures” folder on a E: drive that is an external USB drive. That drive already has dozens of photo directories and thousands of photos spread out through all of those dozens of directories. The directory I’m copying over from old to new computer is not on the new computer. So I assume this process you described will work on the copied over parent directory I put in the E:\Pictures directory and re-index. I also believe Tonfotos will start indexing all the other sub-directories for the first time inside of the E:\Pictures directory and eventually all of the folders and photos will be analyzed by Tonfotos.

Is there any limit to the number of directories and photos that Tonfotos can handle? I checked properties on E:\Pictures and there are currently 101,602 photos taking up 387 GB (415,765,228,952 bytes). The folder I’m copying over (from the old computer) has about 10,250 photos and takes up 37GB. Will this Tonfotos be able to handle potentially over 110,000 photos spread out in potentially 100 sub-directories?

Andrey

MattS Just to confirm, before I try to copy all the photo directories to the new computer, I will turn on the Dossier function on the old computer right?

Yes, but you can do that later too, and just copy people.tnfp file separately from images.

MattS Once I do that, is it clear how long I need to wait for Tonfotos to do anything in the background before I copy all the folders to a thumb drive to move to the new computer?

Once you see “Ready” in status string down below, it is done. Also, you can just manually check if people.tnfp is there. If it is, then it is done, dossier is saved. This dossier file is the only thing this option does.

MattS Once I move the photo directories to the new computer, and install Tonfotos on that computer, I assume I also turn on the Dossier function on the new computer right?

Yep, but even if you forget, program will detect dossier file and suggest you to turn on synchronisation.

MattS I see in this email chain that I need to uninstall the old Tonfotos first before activating the Tonfotos on the new computer.

To be on the safe side, you can start from installing free version first, set up everything, make sure all is well, and only then uninstall old copy and activate new copy with same serial number.

MattS So I assume this process you described will work on the copied over parent directory

This is only related to people.tnfp file, it has to be in root folder of your archive. All other files, such as ini - you can move them around as you want, unless you keep ini files next to the images.

MattS I also believe Tonfotos will start indexing all the other sub-directories for the first time inside of the E:\Pictures directory and eventually all of the folders and photos will be analyzed by Tonfotos.

Yes.

MattS Is there any limit to the number of directories and photos that Tonfotos can handle?

Probably there is, but no one has been able to reach it yet 🙂 Lots of users are working with several terabytes of images without any issues. The only challenge that people reported so far, is if you put several hundreds thousands of images into one flat directory, in this case Tonfotos UI can start lagging. However, if this is all scattered around many subfolders, there will be no issue.

MattS

Andrey

I’ve never seen a tech support break my messages apart and answer EVERY question. Impressive. Thank you.

Clarification.

On the old computer, the “root” is in my profile Pictures directory and the sub-folder I’m interested in is called “FastFoto” (an Epson photo scanner). I’ve set up Tonfotos on the old computer to only scan the FastFoto sub-directory which has the approx 10,000 photos in it.

When I move all these photos and the tonfotos files to the new computer, I’m putting them on an external drive, let’s call it E:. On that drive, I created a folder called “Pictures”. The intention is to place the “FastFoto” directory of the 10,000 photos into a subdirectory of this photo E:\Pictures.

I will be installing Tofotos on the new computer as previously discussed, but I want Tonfotos to scan all photos in E:\Pictures.

Based on the one comment above that I am unsure of, it says I should place the people.tnfp “root folder”. So it sounds like I need to pull the people.tnfp file out of the subdirectory FastFoto and move it up to E:\Pictures on the new computer external drive.

I haven’t turned Dossier on yet but I’m assuming at that point it will create this file people.tnfp. I guess I’ll just do that but once it’s created and the old computer is scanned, I’ll find this file and then with the answer you provide above, I’m basically ready to attempt to do this.

Thank you very much!

Andrey

MattS thank you for your kind words!

MattS So it sounds like I need to pull the people.tnfp file out of the subdirectory FastFoto and move it up to E:\Pictures on the new computer external drive.

Exactly.

Good luck with your transition!