Many of my images are gone!

[cassb]

I don't know what happened or when, but tonight I found that there are whole iMatch folders that used to have 100s of image files in them that are now empty.  The image information in iMatch still exists, but the thumbnail shows that the image is "offline". 

I have no idea how many image files are gone, but I can restore them from backup.   I need to know how to search in the iMatch database for all "offline" images so I know which ones I need to restore. 

Also, should I just copy the image files from backup into the folder that they were in before?  Or do I need to use some function within iMatch to copy the files from the backup hard drive to my iMatch database folders?

Thanks!
Bryan

[cassb]

Nevermind...I just copied the files from backup and rescanned the folders in iMatch and that seemed to work.  But... wth happened to all those pictures.  It was about 15 folders emptied of 1000s of files.  The folders were still there and have their original creation date on the folder... but are empty.  I hope it wasn't iMatch that deleted the files for some reason.  I know I didn't do it on purpose.

[cassb]

Mystery solved.  I was using Image Batch Processor and in Folder and Filename, had checked Output to Same Folder and also Clean Output Folder.  omg what an idiot.  Lucky I had backups, because when it cleans the folder, you cannot restore the files.

[Mario]

Yikes!

IMatch displays a warning message when the option to clean the output folder is enabled (unless you used the 'Don't show again' option).

I have now disabled the combination of the "Use Same Folder" and "Clean Output Folder" in the Batch Processor dialog.
There is still a change that a user constructs the output folder dynamically using variables and than one or more of the input files are hence deleted. Not everything can be detected by IMatch.

[cassb]

Thank you for looking into that, Mario.  I did change the output folder to a temporary one I created, and I did want to clean the output folder before processing the images into it.  But I also checked Output to Same Folder because I thought that is how you enable the specified output folder.

Bryan

[Aubrey]

Mystery solved.  I was using Image Batch Processor and in Folder and Filename, had checked Output to Same Folder and also Clean Output Folder.  omg what an idiot.  Lucky I had backups, because when it cleans the folder, you cannot restore the files.

Thanks for taking the time providing the feedback so that we know what you did. Had you not told the community Mario would not have been able to implement changes for the next version.

Aubrey.

[cassb]

At least I hope someone can learn from my mistake.  :-)