Folder disappears from Tonfotos then has to reindex every time?

VeronicaP

Hi, I am not sure if this is a bug, or if I am doing something wrong. Here is my issue:

I had all my photos in Google photos. I have used the Takeout to download them all to an external hard drive.
I am now extracting them to another folder on the same hard drive - called “All photos extracted”
I have added that folder “All photos extracted” to the Library Locations for Tonfotos.

Tonfotos scans that folder and finds all the subfolders in it (which were albums in Google), and shows the subfolders under the “All photos extracted” top folder. Great. The first time I used it, when I just had a few photos in there , I waited until it had finished scanning, and then could use the options to Delete duplicates etc.

However, now that I have a lot of photos in that folder (500GB/ 280k photos), it never finishes scanning the folder - even after a full day. And if my computer goes to sleep, it seems to lose all connection to the hard drive.

Then when I open Tonfotos, it does not show “All photos extracted” or any of the subfolders under the Folder menu. It is still in the Library Locations, but even when confirming that the hard drive is attached, the folders dont show up in the folder menu. A couple of times I have closed and re-opened tonfotos, or I have done the thing to reconfirm the path for the drive, and that has made the folders come back - BUT when it comes back, it starts scanning again, seemingly from the begnning and repopulating all the folders, taking many, many hours. And again not getting to the end. I could probably reduce the size of the folder if I could do the Delete duplicates option, but I need to wait for it to finish indexing first and that seems to never happen.
And then I am concerned that anytime i want to work with my photos I will need to wait many hours for it to ‘find’ them all again before I can do anything. My plan was to get all the photos in this folder on my hard drive, delete all duplicates, order them, add faces and captions, so that they are organised properly. Tonfotos seems like a good option to do this, but not if it loses all memory of the photos each time the hard drive is disconnected.

Is this how it is meant to work? Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for any help!

Andrey

VeronicaP Is this how it is meant to work? Am I doing something wrong?

No it is not. It should detect that drive is disconnected and stil let you see its content using its internal cache. Based on your derscription, for some reason Tonfotos thinks that your folder is still connected, but it is empty, therefore deleting everything it has already scanned from the cache. And then when you plug it back it assumes those are new files and starts scanning again. However, this is not how it is supposed to work.

VeronicaP Just to clarify, where I said this “that the hard drive is attached, the folders dont show up in the folder menu.

When drive is unlpugged, its content should still be visible in the folder navigation, though it should be greyed out a bit.

I think we need more technical details here. Where exactly you store your files? What file system is there? When you plug it in, how does it appear in your system? Is it separate drive letter? Please provide all relevant details.

VeronicaP

Just to clarify, where I said this “that the hard drive is attached, the folders dont show up in the folder menu. A couple of times I have closed and re-opened tonfotos, or I have done the thing to reconfirm the path for the drive, and that has made the folders come back - BUT when it comes back, it starts scanning again, seemingly from the begnning and repopulating all the folders, taking many, many hours.”
What I mean is that after it has lost the ‘All Photos Extracted’ folder, if I get it to show that folder again - it shows the top level one but non of the subfolders. Then as it scans it they slowly reappear - but one at a time over many hours. So would be no good for me to use to find photos as most arent there for hours.

Stig

Assuming you using Windows, and Windows is the responsible to handling connection to the USB drive (external drive).
So might need to click the drive in explorer for windows to “locate it”, and then the drive should be readable for all other applications. This may lead to drive does not find any photos and have them removed…

The long waiting time is that Tonfotos does several things at once. (which is super!) but it does take time.
I like to have control of what the system is doing. Having the program do everything at once is not for me…
So I remove the “face recognition”, cause this makes the system work for hours++
Select all the other options in the Library.. and see that the scan is done in hours and when finished its responsive and works very well. When you feel like you have other things to do, activate the “face recognition” and have the program do its magic!
PS; remember to turn off power/sleep mode. Search in windows for “edit power plan” and make adjustments to “never” 🙂