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[Don W]

I'm trying to rename a very large number of jpg files with the Rename-Move-Copy tool. I'm renaming the files but not moving them. I'm doing it in batches but still I'm trying to do as many as possible at a time. Twice now MC has hung during the process of renaming the files - when the status bar says "Saving tag changes (xxx remaining)" (The last time there were about 40,000 remaining when it hung of about 57,000 in the batch) Not only does MC hang, but the entire computer is hung as well, forcing a hard reset. The first time it happened MC started up fine (after restarting the PC) but there were lots of broken file links. The second time it happened, MC would not start - it got hung up every time during startup. I finally had to do a complete uninstall and re-install to get back to a working state. Luckily I have been able to recover everything with backup and restore, so there's been no data lost.

Is there a known limit to the maximum number of files the Rename, Move & Copy tool can handle at a time? If not, I wonder if it would it be possible to make the tool more robust when working with large numbers of files. Also, would it perhaps be possible to use some kind of transaction model where the database isn't actually updated until the file itself has been successfully renamed?

[JimH]

Let it run.  Windows will sometimes say an application is unavailable when it is still running.  Let it run overnight if necessary.

[Don W]

But the whole freezes. ctrl-alt-del doesn't even do anything. There's no progress update in the status bar of MC. It's probably possibly that the PC is freezing from some kind of driver issue, which I don't expect MC couldn't do anything about. Except it never seems to happen except when there is a large number of files in the batch.

[JimH]

Let it run.

[Don W]

I think I figured out why MC seemed to hang on startup the second time I killed the power when it became unresponsive while renaming files. It would appear to lock up during start up, even after a complete uninstall and then restoring the library. Turns out I had a Panes view with an expression category where the expression was IsMissing(). MC started up in that panes view and proceeded to evaluate IsMissing() for over 250,000 images. It appears to be the case that that all was happening on the UI thread. I finally just let it run and to my surprise after 20 or 30 minutes the UI came to life.

[~OHM~]

Patience is a virtue!

[Don W]

So I didn't mention that all these files were on a NAS. It didn't occur to me that that might be pertinent until later. When it did, I decided to copy all the files over to a local drive (an SSD) for the purpose of renaming them. When I did that, MC went through the rename process like butter. I did the last batch of over 120,000 files and was able to continue using MC for other things the whole time. I don't understand why it would make a difference as I assume that there's a dedicated thread for the process which should leave the UI responsive in both cases. But having the network in the mix really affects performance. It also made the entire experience of playing with the Panes much, much better - smoother and more responsive. Next time MC feels like it is being unresponsive for a few seconds (which it does do occasionally) I will look at the possibility that there's a network issue involved somehow.