Over 15 years or so years i have taken thousands of photos and stored them in lots of different palces, 1 of which is Dropbox. Recently had an email from Dropbox saying my 2 year free upgrade is due to end so i need to remove all my pics stored on there.
The intention is to transfer all the photos i have on there back to my laptop and remove the duplicates and then do the same from my external hard drive, again removing duplicates. Then i want to sift through and get rid of the dead wood and re store on my laptop and External hard drive again.
Can anyone recommend a programme that i can use to help with this task, have googled but it sounds like many are riddled with faults or virus so would prefer recommendation from a user. Would prefer free but willing to pay for the right programme. Can anyone help please?
Hi Bill,
Hope the link below is useful, a friend of mine uses one of these ,not sure which, as I found this link for him some months ago.
Good luck.
Regards,
Greg
If you want an alternative to Dropbox then you could in theory use Google Photos, it has duplicate detection built into it's upload feature(that said it isn't always 100% accurate if any of the photos has been altered slightly). You could then sync it/download to an alternative directory i.e. your external hardrive once it has done it's piece. You then also have unlimited cloud storage for your photos via google, just make sure your broadband package allows you to upload enough data.
Once the files are in your drive you could do a secondary check using something like duplicate file finder
Thanks Greg, as stated in the replies at the bottom of the linked page, at least two of those listed not usable and can cause problems which is why i am asking for a personal recommendation.
Jake, having a look at google photos as i already use that now for my phone but i cannot see a way of syncing or downloading. It already has hundreds of photos i have deleted from my phone, i am of the old school where you take half a dozen pics and delete those you dont want. Can you advise further if i am missing something?
You can install a application on your PC to do automatic syncing of a certain folder to Google, whenever it detects new photos it starts the sync process.
Once they are there you then select the files you want to download and then choose where to download to. Alternatively something like Takeout will do it in a simpler way in theory by selecting everything
Quote: Originally posted by Francais on 26/10/2016
All my photos are stored in a shoe box kept in the loft, never had any virus problems whatsoever!
have a few hundred of them also, just gets a little difficult carrying half a dozen boxes, far bigger than shoe boxes, around all the time to show friends your pics. Also gets very expensive taking the extra pics, and getting printed, as i do too make sure i get the good one i want.
Can't speak to a de-duper, but I use Google Photos on my W7 laptop, and android tablets and phones.
I like how it syncs across all of them. Easy cloud storage, free, with some compression, but perfectly acceptable for everything apart from large printing, and easily shareable in the same way Dropbox is. The originals are on the lappy or my devices and backed up to an external drive.
Personally, I'd forget about de-duping and just make sure I only keep (and upload) the pics I wanted to keep going forward. Life's too short for wading through thousands.
TBH, I'm so lazy I just copy off and upload everything I take. I list them by date so so long as I know roughly when they were taken, I can find what I'm looking for. And you can search within Photos anyway.
------------- Mike
My advice is worth no more than the price paid for it
Understand what your saying Mike. The intention is to group together everything i have and then firstly get rid of all copies and then do as you say and cull and put together albums to make easier to find. As they are stored in diferent places it would mean going through each set and keeping the best but that would mean looking at te same photos numerous times and when the amount you have run into many thousand thats a lot of photos or i risk losing some of the good ones. Getting old means memories getting hazy and would hate to lose some i dont want to.
As we get older and families die off you realise how precious those memories can be and would hate the next generations lose memories because i could not be bothered lol.
Quote: Originally posted by Bill the Bus on 30/10/2016
... i risk losing some of the good ones. Getting old means memories getting hazy and would hate to lose some i dont want to.
As we get older and families die off you realise how precious those memories can be and would hate the next generations lose memories because i could not be bothered lol.
Completely understand. I've two photos of my Mum as a child, and none of my Dad. They both went on to be police officers (how they met) and strangely, I've loads of them in the job, press photos etc.
They did better with me as a kid, but as an adult, and with my kids and their kids, I've thousands. My Google Photos is now at 7700, and I'm betting you'll have at least that. I expect some will have many, many thousands more.
Personally I'd leave well alone rather than risk losing anything in error, but apply more discipline in what I keep and upload in future.
If Dropbox has been your main cloud storage in the past, and they require you to move it off before your account expires, I can see it's a big job. But it's going to be a big job whether you just move everything, or be selective. And being lazy, I'd just move everything.
Good luck
------------- Mike
My advice is worth no more than the price paid for it
I may look into this as I have a load of duplicates for around 101 different reasons
One of these days I am going to sit down and sort them out - and get rid of some that I no longer require.
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Topic: Duplicate photo finder
