Is there a "Safe" version with archive and delete features?

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Thank you so very much for this software! I’ve been putting off the task of sorting through our family memories for over a decade. It felt so daunting to sift through old backup hard drives containing over a terabyte of pictures and videos—tons of garbage included—from phone dump after phone dump, plus other miscellaneous files. The fear of not finding everything buried in those disgusting, disorganized phone file structures overwhelmed me to the point where I’d just think, “I’ll deal with this one day.” And it continued to pile up over the years. So again, thank you!

Now that this beautiful software (version 1.0 on my Windows 10 desktop) has found and moved everything over to a new 2-terabyte external Samsung T7 drive, the task of going through all the garbage is still there and overwhelming me again. I am able to click on the file locations and manually check and delete pictures; however, going through 4 or 5 locations of duplicates becomes painstaking.

Looking at the alpha features, I see that archive and delete options are available. However, I’m not totally sure how—or if—I should install it, given all the warnings about it being beta/alpha software. That said, the latest announcement about the newest alpha suggests it’s possibly more stable than an old beta, so I’d like to try it. I found this link: PhotoStructure | Install PhotoStructure. However, it’s for version 2023.12.0-alpha.7, not the newest 2024 version. Does this .exe installer then update to the newest alpha?

My photo library is 120k items, and it did take many days to build the whole thing. However, time isn’t my biggest concern—it’s bit rot (as described) or possibly corrupting my originals by upgrading to the alpha. I’m also concerned that when I delete things and it wants to “resync,” it’ll spin up the old hard drives once again, and I worry they may fail one day. I do have three copies of everything, but none are on the cloud; I only have three backups on different hard drives, all of which are plugged into my laptop with HDD docks.

Should I stick to version 1.0, or try an alpha? I wouldn’t even mind starting over with the alpha and rebuilding the whole library if that would be safer.

Thank you!

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Howdy, and welcome to PhotoStructure @M_M !

The current latest build is actually only available in the PhotoStructure for Server editions – I’m working to address this with the next release (I had to rebuild the whole PhotoStructure desktop integration due to third-party library issues–that’s done, but now other issues are now preventing a release–I’m working on it!) Consider joining our Discord to get progress updates for the next release (and many other discussion topics that you can opt-in to if you choose).

My feeling about old storage media is that it should probably only be scanned once, let PhotoStructure sweep all unique files into your library (that you have on new storage media), and then disconnect the old drive, put it on the shelf, and let it collect dust.

Note that the “scanned drives” setting is additive, so when you find another old HDD, you can plug it in, add it to your scanned drives list, let PhotoStructure import it, and then disconnect it.

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Thank you for having me!

I understand this is probably a large undertaking and won’t begin to pretend I understand all of the difficulties in coding it, so I will be patiently waiting :slight_smile:

The reason I was hoping to have the delete functions was to sift through some of the pictures across all drives I’d rather never existed in the first place, haha, preventing future resurfacing and just keeping the files worth saving. It would be much easier with a few clicks rather than going into each location, deleting it, then moving to the next. Also, sometimes photostructure gets stuck when the file no longer exists, and I have to restart it.

I will continue on the path I’ve started until you work out the kinks :smile:

Thank you again!

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