Backup of database - yes or no ?

Stig

I was unlucky and my program stopped working. I tried reinstalling, it did not help.
I uninstalled the application and reinstalled it again. v.1.13.4.
Now my database that was about 2gb, is now starting over again..
All photos are been re-read into a blank database.
All faces that I’ve gone through.. several 5-10-20k with faces confirmed. Now all faces are coming up unconfirmed.
It really, really would be nice to have a backup solution going…
I’ve spent weeks/months (not whole days, but evenings) going through and confirming faces/removing wrong etc..
I might have a slow NAS, but this is abit of a struggle.. waiting for everything to be re-read.

Okey, I’m very happy with the software, but I feel like having a way to backup all the work the software has read in and the effort we put into it.
Understand this might fundamentally change the product with having to be able to backup/restore backup. Would it be possible to vote on this ?

Andrey

Stig Okey, I’m very happy with the software, but I feel like having a way to backup all the work the software has read in and the effort we put into it.

Sorry to hear about your issues.

However, our ini-files approach is the backup solution. It contains another copy of the information that is stored into database. Also, assuming you regularly backup all your photos (which you obviously should do), those files will be backed up alongside, so third/forth copy will be created. I am open to suggestions, but it looks like aproach is quite optimal.

Now, faces reappearing. Are you sure those are same faces you already confirmed, or just similar? Since your archive is still indexed, suggestions algorithm will produce different results, and it could be it finally capable to offer you more faces that it was not capable to offer when it has more complete (but probably more contradicting) information.

In order to verify, can you please go to already scanned files and manually check faces on few of them? Are there no confirmed faces at all? Do faces you are shure you deleted really appeared again? If that is the case, I can only assume that you somehow deleted ini files, from your archive. Did you? Can you please check if there .tonfotos.ini files next to your photos?

Stig

All folders have .ini files in them.
And I see now - after the system has been running for a few days, that it does recognize faces that I already have pointed out. But it does give new faces suggestions that was abit off… and it was this that I was wondering about… I think I wait until it has gone through everything. So you system works correct with finding already scanned images 🙂.

Yes, all files are been backup elsewhere, my NAS is where I do the work, editing etc.

But it is the re-scanning that takes alot of time.
It really would be nice to be able to have an option to “path-to-always-have-a-backup-of-tonfotos” would be really appreciated.

Stig

I’m 64hours to go still..
and the face recon on some faces is very good which earlier did not “find any”… and other faces are getting a lot of other faces that clearly is wrong. But this is maybe cause the database has to be fully updated before it makes a smarter advice?
And yes, I will get a faster NAS, even though I have enable Jumbo Frames on the NAS and PC network card and the switch is capable of handling jumbo frames.

Andrey

Stig But this is maybe cause the database has to be fully updated before it makes a smarter advice?

Well, this is complicated topic. Typically yes, the more samples program has, the more accurate suggestions are. But there are expections, since quality of smaples also matters.

Stig I have enable Jumbo Frames on the NAS and PC network card and the switch is capable of handling jumbo frames.

Bases on the stats you published earlier - this has nothing to do with jubmo frames. Using those can improve speed maybe couple percents at best. In your case your NAS is just very slow, I guess. On 1GB/s you should be getting stable 100MB/s, even if you don’t use RAID. One HDD typically goes 250-300 MB/s, so you don’t even need RAID to use 100% of your network bandwidth.

Stig

So abit fed up with slow drive, so I purchased a 4tb m2 drive.
Now Tonfotos have no problem keeping up with copying files into the drive and reading it..
“…few seconds left” the program is telling me now :-)

But now that I moved files …
I Stop Tonfotos.
My photos on R:\MyPhotos
Then I disconnect that drive from the machine and attach is just using UNC \10.0.0.19\MyPhotos
The new M2 disk is now attached and I call it R:\
I Copy all files from UNC \10.0.0.9\MyPhotos -> R:\MyPhotos
Then I start Tonfotos and it “complains” that the R:\MyPhotos is now “new” and it then removes all the photos and starts to scan over again.

Is there a smoother way to do this - moving folder around and still having them inside ? (like attach / detach system)

Andrey

Stig Is there a smoother way to do this - moving folder around and still having them inside ? (like attach / detach system)

There is. Once Tonfotos detected that old root folder is missing, you can go to Library locations and tell it new location. No rescanning will be necessary. While old root folder is still visible to the program, Tonfotos will not show you that option.

Stig

Ah, i pointed it to wrong folder, and it cleaned up my db. :-/ Oh well, lesson learned.

Stig

Okey, so I’ve copied all files over to the 4TB M2 drive which is suppose to be really fast.
I testet with a 4gb file writes 110-115MB/s and I get 100-400MB/s read.

I’ve startet to read everything all over again (by uninstalling and installing the software)
Seems like Tonfotos does not speed up the process even though I got a faster M2 disk.

Not sure what I’m doing wrong here.. but I was expecting that the “updating photos would go way faster..”.

Andrey

Stig It will be faster, but please understand that reading files is not the only thing to happens during indexing. Program creates thumbnails, recognizes faces, etc. Now the bottleneck is not reading, most likely facial recognition is now what takes most of the time. Also, this timer is just estimation, actual figures might differ.