@onder, sorry to hear your experience. Im not quite sure i understand what exactly you have at the moment but maybe in a few steps we can help you walk thru from where you are to where you would like to be. As indeed you point out Mylio should be able to (re)organise your files.
If you’re willing to provide a bit more details i can see if we can walk you thru this.
Here are a few point but be aware some of them are non-reversible if you would follow them.
- In the device settings you can specify for each computer/device or extranl disk what synchronisation policy you would want. There are the options, Thumbnails, Auto Optimize or Vault.
From what I understand your external drive should be marked VAULT, which means it will contain ALL originals in full resolution (when fully synchronised)
For other devices then your external drive (vault) you probably want to specify Thumbnails, which indicates to Mylio that those devices will only contain thumbnails, unless you specifically state to download previews or originals.
Once all would be sorted as you would like, you can initiate on each device via the device settings Clear Cache, which tells Mylio to remove everything from that device which should not be there according the Sync policy settings. but I would suggest to do that last once all is sorted.
- via the folder view in Mylio you will be able to see the top folder(s) that you have. Im not sure if ou would have a specificities preference on how all the files should be organised but when you right click on the folder and select “More Folder Actions …” you have the option to rearrange the pictures and folders automatically according a predefined or customised set, like eg by year or month etc. You can also customise this and eg use: {Y}/{Y}-{m}/{Y}{m}{D} to organise the folders and pictures by the date taken in a folder structure like Year / Year-month / Date (Eg. 2020/2020-05/20200523)
Alternatively you can move manually your folders via this window and organise them as you prefer.Please note that this action cant be undone automatically, if you woud initiate the auto organisation and you dont like it, you cant undo this unless you move it all back yourself manually. So consider this carefully before you initiate this please.
In case you have many folders (how big is your library?) you could consider to do it first with a test copy of a folder with a few test pictures just to see how it looks and delete it afterwards.
When performing the above Mylio will accordingly synchronise these changes to the other devices. Devices that only are expected to have the thumbnails will only have eg the xml files and not the real pictures. Only the external drive will at the end have all originals. (once you clean the cache). Which if my understanding is correct what you would intend to have.
As good as i can, i can try to walk you thru. Im not affiliated by Mylio but happy to help as I can. FYI i reorganised my 250K library containing all the family history back till 1900. and got it better organised thanks to Mylio (and i have tried many) so happy to share my experience if i can.