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Tags on portable drives
Posted: 13 Apr 2011 11:36
by LittleBiG
Wouldn't be better if tags.dat contained (for example) volume serial instead of drive letter in case of portable devices? In this way tags, labels and comments would be really portable.
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 13 Apr 2011 12:42
by LittleBiG
Benefits:
- XY or tags.dat can be copied from one computer to another. Portable tags remain.
- If you push your flash drive another USB slot, drive letter may change. Tags remain.
I have seen portable tag discussions, but maybe this point of view didn't come up. If I'm wrong, Don, please ignore my topic.
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 13 Apr 2011 16:41
by j_c_hallgren
LittleBiG wrote:Benefits:
- If you push your flash drive another USB slot, drive letter may change. Tags remain.
And this also could occur if you have two USB drives plugged in at same time when you normally have only one...your idea makes sense to me.
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 13 Apr 2011 20:06
by admin
Portable tags are on my list. They'll surely come.
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 14 Feb 2013 18:56
by admin
They have come today.

Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 14 Feb 2013 21:20
by LittleBiG
I appreciate your work on portable tags, but this solution is especially for the another topic, when XY resides on a portable device and somebody wants to tag files specifically on that. It doesn't seem to be helpful in my case, when XYplorer is on a fixed drive and I have a few flash drives with many tagged files.
My idea, storing volume serial or simply the volume name would ensure, that all path in tag.dat would point to exactly the same place. It wouldn't matter any more, to where you would copy XY and tag.dat. So I think this would be the general solution of portability.
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 15 Feb 2013 08:18
by Borut
+1
And, additionally, as an enhancement to the tagged objects list manager, a special move function could be there, basically enabling a "replace all" old media IDs (serial number or name, whatever would be used) with a new one (possibly defined by hand and/or from the list of available media). Just an idea - I do not use tags heavily, but have a feeling that only this approach would mean a real portable tag solution.
My idea is for instance to be able to tag images for a life long period (tens of years), during which they will be moved several times to larger and larger media.
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 15 Feb 2013 08:18
by admin
Agreed. I might add this later.
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 15 Feb 2013 08:30
by admin
Borut wrote:And, additionally, as an enhancement to the tagged objects list manager, a special move function could be there, basically enabling a "replace all" old media IDs (serial number or name, whatever would be used) with a new one (possibly defined by hand and/or from the list of available media). Just an idea - I do not use tags heavily, but have a feeling that only this approach would mean a real portable tag solution.
My idea is for instance to be able to tag images for a life long period (tens of years), during which they will be moved several times to larger and larger media.
Note that I also have plans to support local tag.dat files that would be carried together with the media.
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 15 Feb 2013 12:31
by Marco
admin wrote:Note that I also have plans to support local tag.dat files that would be carried together with the media.
After years of portability and self-containment phylosophy you would start scattering files outside XY folder?
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 15 Feb 2013 12:43
by admin
Marco wrote:admin wrote:Note that I also have plans to support local tag.dat files that would be carried together with the media.
After years of portability and self-containment phylosophy you would start scattering files outside XY folder?

Only when you wish so...
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 15 Feb 2013 13:06
by PeterH
admin wrote:Marco wrote:admin wrote:Note that I also have plans to support local tag.dat files that would be carried together with the media.
After years of portability and self-containment phylosophy you would start scattering files outside XY folder?

Only when you wish so...
From my POV, for this function it makes much sense.
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 17 Feb 2013 12:10
by Borut
PeterH wrote:admin wrote:Marco wrote:admin wrote:Note that I also have plans to support local tag.dat files that would be carried together with the media.
After years of portability and self-containment phylosophy you would start scattering files outside XY folder?

Only when you wish so...
From my POV, for this function it makes much sense.
From my POV: Scattered tag.dat? Like those descript.ions, thumb.dbs and the like? Blah, pfui, no way.
Leave the control by the user: Why not having an optional argument in the XYplorer command line, to specify from where, or which exactly tag.dat should be used with the instance just starting?
Just my 2ct.
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 17 Feb 2013 12:27
by tag.mania
If XYplorer finally support both centralized tag.dat or/and de-centralized local tag.dat (in every folder related and having info absolutaly for the current file folder then this software I can say is one of the official computer revolutions. Advantages on safety with tag.dat in every folder are so strong as much as other advantages of centralized database. Both of them will be the absolute winner. I could forget windows explorer for ever.
ps: I steel can't understand why I waited 25 years for tags. I can't imagine how much productivity has been lost for 2,5 decades having no tags.
And now ... "run Europe run" ! (before the whole capital go to China and India of course)
Re: Tags on portable drives
Posted: 17 Feb 2013 13:18
by PeterH
Borut wrote:From my POV: Scattered tag.dat? Like those descript.ions, thumb.dbs and the like? Blah, pfui, no way.
You may be right for drives belonging to one computer.
But having files with tags on a removable drive, and maybe using this on another PC is another situation, I think. You'd might love if the tags are included with the drive?
Same for external drives used for backup: either data related to the backup (i.e. tags) are contained in the backup - or you have to synchronize every drives backup with a backup of XY data...