More lost files

[Nessa]

Greetings

Partly my fault, but I just lost some important commercial photos when using PhotoMechanic.

Here's what happened, why it is  _partly_  my fault, and why there might be a serious glitch with PhotoMechanic:

At the end of last week I spent two and a half days photographing a small resort/motel/cabin type of place in Northern California.

Because I don't have a laptop computer, I filled most of my Compact Flash cards and brought them home for uploading to my desktop computer.

I also had a job the afternoon I returned home, so when I returned I quickly copied the photos from my flash cards directly to awaiting folders on my desktop computer, without taking the time to boot PhotoMechanic, updating my stationary pad and Ingesting with unique names.

The photos from each card went into separate folders, and each folder was named appropriately to the job but ending with consecutive letters, such as _a, _b, _c, etc.

Because each file was named _D2X0001.JPG (with consecutive numbers), each folder had photos with the same names.

This evening (Sunday), I finally had the time to sort out the best photos, the keepers.

After tagging the best photos in folder "a" I dragged them into the "keepers" folder within folder "a."

I then did the same for folder "b."

However, when I attempted to drag the best photos in folder "b" to its own "keepers" folder, my hand slipped and the photos went into the keepers folder for "a."

Because the files had not been renamed, I was immediately met with the warning that files in "a" with the same names already existed. My choices were to replace or cancel them individually or cancel the operation.

I clicked on the "Cancel" button to avoid losing the existing files within folder "a."

Unfortunately -- and this is the possible glitch -- the cancel command did not work and I lost the best photos within folder "a."

Granted, I should have renamed the files with unique names beforehand.
Granted, I should have been more careful in dragging.

However, the "Cancel" button did not cancel the command to drag and the existing files within "a" were replaced by those from "b."

This is something you should look into and correct.

I am using Windows XP Pro, and the latest version of PhotoMechanic.

It took a lot of work to take those photos -- I am not a "point 'n clicker" -- and to set up the lighting, etc. It might also cost me financially and reputation wise.

Please make sure that this fine program is not something I will have to discard.

Thank you,

Robert McClintock

[Nessa]

One more thing...

I just ran Search and Recover 4 on the drive on which the files resided and the result was no deleted files found.

A while back, I had another "glitch" with PhotoMechanic that no one seemed able to duplicate, and the same thing happened "no deleted files found" -- they just vanished.

Thank you,

Robert McClintock

[Kirk Baker]

Robert,

Partly my fault, but I just lost some important commercial photos when using PhotoMechanic.

Here's what happened, why it is  _partly_  my fault, and why there might be a serious glitch with PhotoMechanic:

At the end of last week I spent two and a half days photographing a small resort/motel/cabin type of place in Northern California.

Because I don't have a laptop computer, I filled most of my Compact Flash cards and brought them home for uploading to my desktop computer.

I also had a job the afternoon I returned home, so when I returned I quickly copied the photos from my flash cards directly to awaiting folders on my desktop computer, without taking the time to boot PhotoMechanic, updating my stationary pad and Ingesting with unique names.

The photos from each card went into separate folders, and each folder was named appropriately to the job but ending with consecutive letters, such as _a, _b, _c, etc.

Because each file was named _D2X0001.JPG (with consecutive numbers), each folder had photos with the same names.

This evening (Sunday), I finally had the time to sort out the best photos, the keepers.

After tagging the best photos in folder "a" I dragged them into the "keepers" folder within folder "a."

I then did the same for folder "b."

However, when I attempted to drag the best photos in folder "b" to its own "keepers" folder, my hand slipped and the photos went into the keepers folder for "a."

Because the files had not been renamed, I was immediately met with the warning that files in "a" with the same names already existed. My choices were to replace or cancel them individually or cancel the operation.

I clicked on the "Cancel" button to avoid losing the existing files within folder "a."

Unfortunately -- and this is the possible glitch -- the cancel command did not work and I lost the best photos within folder "a."

Granted, I should have renamed the files with unique names beforehand.
Granted, I should have been more careful in dragging.

However, the "Cancel" button did not cancel the command to drag and the existing files within "a" were replaced by those from "b."

This is something you should look into and correct.

I am using Windows XP Pro, and the latest version of PhotoMechanic.

It took a lot of work to take those photos -- I am not a "point 'n clicker" -- and to set up the lighting, etc. It might also cost me financially and reputation wise.

Please make sure that this fine program is not something I will have to discard.

What version of Photo Mechanic are you using?  Often times people think they're using the latest version and they're not.  Version number please.

Are the photos still on your Compact Flash cards?  You could always download them again.

When you performed the drag and drop, was the destination folder in the Favorites or Navigator?  Or was it a Windows Explorer window?

Until we can figure out what happened to you, I recommend that you don't use drag and drop to copy files.  Use the Copy Photos dialog.  It will always rename files to avoid collisions.

-Kirk

[Nessa]

Hi, Kirk

I regulary check for updates; mine is 4.5.2.

The photos are not on my flash cards -- I deleted them for the next job.

I dragged and dropped in the Navigation window within PhotoMechanic.

In future, I can use the "Copy photos..." dialog, except I was not copying them, I was moving the best photos into a subfolder called "keepers" -- something I read in the manual.

Thanks,

Robert McClintock

Robert,

Partly my fault, but I just lost some important commercial photos when using PhotoMechanic.

Here's what happened, why it is  _partly_  my fault, and why there might be a serious glitch with PhotoMechanic:

At the end of last week I spent two and a half days photographing a small resort/motel/cabin type of place in Northern California.

Because I don't have a laptop computer, I filled most of my Compact Flash cards and brought them home for uploading to my desktop computer.

I also had a job the afternoon I returned home, so when I returned I quickly copied the photos from my flash cards directly to awaiting folders on my desktop computer, without taking the time to boot PhotoMechanic, updating my stationary pad and Ingesting with unique names.

The photos from each card went into separate folders, and each folder was named appropriately to the job but ending with consecutive letters, such as _a, _b, _c, etc.

Because each file was named _D2X0001.JPG (with consecutive numbers), each folder had photos with the same names.

This evening (Sunday), I finally had the time to sort out the best photos, the keepers.

After tagging the best photos in folder "a" I dragged them into the "keepers" folder within folder "a."

I then did the same for folder "b."

However, when I attempted to drag the best photos in folder "b" to its own "keepers" folder, my hand slipped and the photos went into the keepers folder for "a."

Because the files had not been renamed, I was immediately met with the warning that files in "a" with the same names already existed. My choices were to replace or cancel them individually or cancel the operation.

I clicked on the "Cancel" button to avoid losing the existing files within folder "a."

Unfortunately -- and this is the possible glitch -- the cancel command did not work and I lost the best photos within folder "a."

Granted, I should have renamed the files with unique names beforehand.
Granted, I should have been more careful in dragging.

However, the "Cancel" button did not cancel the command to drag and the existing files within "a" were replaced by those from "b."

This is something you should look into and correct.

I am using Windows XP Pro, and the latest version of PhotoMechanic.

It took a lot of work to take those photos -- I am not a "point 'n clicker" -- and to set up the lighting, etc. It might also cost me financially and reputation wise.

Please make sure that this fine program is not something I will have to discard.

What version of Photo Mechanic are you using?  Often times people think they're using the latest version and they're not.  Version number please.

Are the photos still on your Compact Flash cards?  You could always download them again.

When you performed the drag and drop, was the destination folder in the Favorites or Navigator?  Or was it a Windows Explorer window?

Until we can figure out what happened to you, I recommend that you don't use drag and drop to copy files.  Use the Copy Photos dialog.  It will always rename files to avoid collisions.

-Kirk

[Kirk Baker]

Robert,

I regulary check for updates; mine is 4.5.2.

The photos are not on my flash cards -- I deleted them for the next job.

I dragged and dropped in the Navigation window within PhotoMechanic.

In future, I can use the "Copy photos..." dialog, except I was not copying them, I was moving the best photos into a subfolder called "keepers" -- something I read in the manual.

You can move them with the Copy Photos dialog, just check the "Move" checkbox.

I'll see if I can reproduce your issue.

Thanks for the additional information,

-Kirk

[Kirk Baker]

Robert,

I clicked on the "Cancel" button to avoid losing the existing files within folder "a."

Unfortunately -- and this is the possible glitch -- the cancel command did not work and I lost the best photos within folder "a."

However, the "Cancel" button did not cancel the command to drag and the existing files within "a" were replaced by those from "b."

This is something you should look into and correct.

I have tried to reproduce this in a number of different ways and I have been unsuccessful.  I have canceled the entire copy via drag and drop when the 'Confirm File Replace' dialog appears with no loss of files.  I have used the "No" button multiple times (once for each file) and lost no files.  I have allowed one image of the set to be moved over and responded with "No" for all of the rest of the files and only the initial file was moved (as expected.)

Please tell me how to reproduce this problem and I'll do everything I can to fix it.  If I cannot reproduce the problem then it is very unlikely that I can fix it.

We use the Windows Shell to perform the copy/move and it negotiates all UI, copying, and deleting, returning control to Photo Mechanic when it completes.  From what I understand, Windows Explorer uses the same mechanism internally to do its file system manipulation.

Please give me an explicit list of instructions on how to reproduce the problem and please list a folder hierarchy to reproduce it with.  I will create a similar hierarchy of folders and files and try again to re-create the loss of files.

Thanks,

-Kirk