Ready to wipe off Mylio and start over clean

Tips, Tricks, & Best Practices
#1

I am tired off figuring out where my originals are, and consuming space where the mylio application resides. All i wanted from mylio to have my originals are synced to my external drive and have the thumbnails available elsewhere i login to my account. Originals are now all over the place, the folder structure…etc is very confusing, and tired of figuring it out.

I want to wipe off all mylio on all computers, and i will manually copy my originals to my external drive with the structure i want and only access these originals elsewhere. Somehow the mapping isnt intuitive or not working for me. I spend 390GB on one computer, 580GB on iMAC, 180GB on iPhone, and 890GB on external drive. I would have assumed 890GB would be the total i would have spent on external drive, and thumbnails…etc would be much less. 890GB doubled everywhere, tired of figuring it out.

Enough of ranting, what is the best way of wiping it all off, and keeping the originals wherever they are, so that i can move them to my external drive. Thought this is the job of Mylio. Such a waste.

Onder

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#2

This sounds like to me that all your originals are on your external drive. Your iMac (and other computer) have downloaded some originals (the ones you decided to edit on those computers). The actual raw file will be exactly the same on ALL of the devices, because the editing in Mylio is none destructive, and those edits should be found in a mylio central database.

In my case for example, my external SSD has my originals and vault. my iphone synced all the thumbnails. My iPad has all my thumbnails, and all my previews.

#3

The clear cache button in the Devices screen can clear originals from devices that don’t “want” them. Make sure only your external is set to be a vault then hit clear cache for each device on the rest.

#4

@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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

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#5

Exactly! I didn’t really know enough about Mylio’s architecture when I signed up. 6 Months later I wish I would have studied more. I think the “Vault vs Device” was my issue. I would love to see an in-depth setup wizard that asks you questions about your collection and asks use case questions to guide you to your own optimal setup. I have 240,000 lost originals due to my lack of reading.

#6

Hi @Steve_Krontz and did you remove the lost originals form the library? its easy to clean up if you know its just an incorrect reference.
GO to Devices, click on the lost originals, select ann and delete.
(only do this if you are sure they are just incorrect references)

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#7

Thanks a lot Luc, I will try to figure out what i can do. My files arent too big of a library. Maybe around 30K images. What i am thinking to do is, forget about what Mylio can do for me, and i will consolidate all my images to a new “external drive” I purchased (5TB). And use this as main drive to keep my originals. Wipe off all other images across different devices. Then install Mylio to all devices to use this main source. Once i am comfortable, i will duplicate another “external drive” as vault to have backup.

Currently, i am trying to figure out, how i can do this, as NAS, …etc… Studying that.

#8

@onder, Ok, understand. let us know if we can help in any way.

If i may suggest, do NOT configure you external drive as a NAS (unless you really have to or have specific reasons to do that) as a NAS device in Mylio can currently not be moved between computers. So if you would be planning on connecting the external drive one day to computer1 and the other day on computer2, eg because you travel etc. That won’t work with a NAS configured drive. Thats due to specifics of how a “NAS” is addressed and catalogued and therefor always needs to be managed by one and the same computer.
If you can configure it as an external USB drive you have all the flexibility that you want. you can connect it to any of your computers and swap it around. (im doing that with several on mine) That works as a charm.

Hope this helps.

#9

@onder- like you I’ve been frustrated by confusion of how the files are all handled. I have found the Mylio tutorials great at selling the idea, but not user friendly to get things set up. I’d really like “If-then” scenerio’s because I didn’t know how I wanted it to start and now my vision has changed, and I feel stuck and frustrated with the current structure. I am hoping this forum can guide me out of the disorganization.

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