I’ve just installed tonfotos. It’s created lots of new folders, named by year, and copied (or moved?) some (but certainly not all) of my original photos into these folders. Some renamed, some not. That’s annoying enough but it’s used up an additional 160Gb of valuable space. I need that space back and I can’t have my images duplicated, it’ll take another 1Tb.
How do I sort this mess out? Can I safely delete all those folders (and their contents) created by tonfotos?
tonfotos grabbed a chunk of disc, made new folders and duplicates
trailguru Tonfotos does not do anything like that until you ask it to do. It has function “Move to main archive” that would sort your files to folders like Year/Date. However, in order to activate this function you have to call this function yourself and confirm location. Also, when moving files, it takes care about duplicates, it will not create new duplicates.
I would be happy to help, but I’m afraid, I will not be able to do that based on incorrect or incomplete information. It would really help if you would provide step by step description of your commands, what you tried tto achiive and what went not as expected. Then I can suggest what you could do to fix the situation.
Andrey
Hi Andrey Thanks for getting back to me. I installed the programme and followed the prompts (where are your image files?) as delivered during installation. I then left the program to run. I thought TF would simply catalogue the folders (as per other cataloging software) and create a data file. Instead it create the new set of folders in my G:\Pictures folder, as indicated on original query, and duplicated a lot of images but by no means all.
For example:
Image 35028-2003
Original file in G:\Pictures\Tims original images\Digital photos\34917
tonfotos duplicate in G:\Pictures\2003\2003-09-06
Within TF I can’t see my original folder tree or the photos in them.
Ideally I’ll like to delete all those new folders to reclaim the space and, as seems possible, stop TF doing it all again.
I backed up G:\Pictures before installing TF. I could uninstall TF, delete the folders on G: that TF created and, if necessary, copy the back-up back to G:\Pictures. Finally get some clear instructions on how to install and configure TF properly.
- Edited
trailguru Thank you for more details. Your initial assumption is totally correct: when you start the application, it would just index files as you expected. It would not move or copy files.
This new folder structure is very similar that Tonfotos would create if you use F6 function or import from external USB drive. It that would be F6, then there would be no file copies, it would just move files from their original location to new folder structure. However, if original folder structure still exists and contain those files, that must mean that instead that was import from your external USB where you most likely backed up your files.
Typically when you plug in USB drive, Tonfotos would detect it and and would popup dialog suggesting you to import those files into your archive. I guess what actually happened is some one actually pressed “Import” button on that dialog, and then another one in the next one, and that initiated import of all image files from your backup copy back to your archive, creating those folders.
Please pay attention that there is checkbox in the import dialog “automatically import in the future”. If that one was also checked, then next time you plug in the drive, import will start automatically without any popups. However, it will only import newer files (with creation date older than ones already imported). To double check if this option is selected you can forcefully call import dialog from the main menu when drive is still connected.
trailguru Ideally I’ll like to delete all those new folders to reclaim the space and, as seems possible, stop TF doing it all again.
As I said, Tonfotos never does that until you ask it. I already explained above what most likely was the reason based on your description.
I backed up G:\Pictures before installing TF.
If you want to get back to original state, probably the easiest way would be just to remove your G:\Pictures altogether and restore its contents from your backup. You don’t need to uninstall Tonfotos, it will just re-index files once they are changed.
Or, if you want to be extra sure, you can delete G:\Pictures from library locations dialog and add it again once you done restoring files from backup.
Also, to avoid starting another import by mistake from this drive, next time Tonfotos will popup a dialog suggesting import, press “don’t ask again for this media”.
Please let me know if that helped to resolved your situation.
Hi Andrey Just to confirm - there are no settings, that I might have inadvertently selected on install asking TF to create the new folders, to switch off before I run TF and reconnect my original photos drive (that’s the USB drive G
?
Hi Andrey
I’ve returned my pictures archive (on USB drive G to its original state (i.e. with the newly created TF folders removed), checked that G:/Pictures mirrors its ‘pre-TF install’ backup and will resume with TF tomorrow.
Hi Andrey Quick question… during scanning can I starting adding people to the People Section? Or should I wait for scanning to complete? At the moment the People Section is empty.