Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[d_pert]

I installed a fresh MC 26.0.22 on a main PC. All imported, all thumbnails created. Great.

I backed up the Library+Settings on the main PC. I noted the Backup file was about 120MB.

I installed a fresh MC 26.0.22 on two other PCs. For the content, one PC has mapped drives and the other PC has mirrored drives so that the paths are identical to that of the main PC.

I Restored the Library+Settings from the main PC onto the two other PCs. Seemed fine: thumbnails appeared in various views.

However ... the first time I do an Auto-Import on the other PCs they both start rebuilding all the thumbnails.

In one case -- a moderately powerful tower -- it took 2-3 hours.

In the other case -- a MS Surface Pro 4 with the content on ext. HDDs connected by USB 3.0, which I've used fine with MC for years -- it's taken 10 hours to get through approx. 10% of the rebuilding. I've cordnoned off that system for 3-5 days to let it finish. right now it's advancing the counter by approx. one thumbnail every two seconds.

Weren't thumbnails supposted to "carry through" Backup-Restore from one PC to another, and avoid the time consuming rebuilding?

Of possible interest:

--I've been through this a few times over the years and learned that if I close MC mid-Import, then relaunch MC and reinit. the Auto Import, it'll resume where it left off, but going much faster! Then after a few hours it'll have slowed to a creep again.
--"Build thumbnails" is selected in the Auto-Import settings, however, it always is and doesn't always (re)build with every Auto-Import action.
--Am running Portable installs on all three PCs.
--Approx. 155,000 files.


Thank you.

[RoderickGI]

Weren't thumbnails supposted to "carry through" Backup-Restore from one PC to another, and avoid the time consuming rebuilding?

No. Thumbnails aren't included in MC backups. It would make the backups too large.

There have been some requests around this topic, and carrying them over from previous major versions during an upgrade. That led to this change.

26.0.7 (11/21/2019)
8. NEW: Thumbnails are copied on an upgrade install.

The portable install may differ from a PC install, in where the thumbnails are stored. If the thumbnail database is in exactly the same location, MC may use it. On normal PC installs using default locations for a new major version, the thumbnails database is stored in a new location, so the old database is not used. Hence the change above to copy them (actually, probably only the one thumbnails database for the default Library) across.

Regardless, if the thumbnail database became "dirty", where the indexing didn't match files after an upgrade, MC would rebuild the thumbnails.

Slow thumbnail rebuilding has been addressed in the past, but in your case it may just be because you are using portable installs. Search the forum on the topic and see what you can find. The stopping and restarting the build to improve speed was fixed at some stage, I believe.

[marko]

Logging too...

If you have logging enabled, thumbnailing slows down as the log file gets larger. Try disabling logging (under Help) and see if that might improve performance? Remember to turn it back on once finished.