XYplorer Beta Club

Hi, may I suggest to include a global orphan location clean-up option in list management? Currently, it is very tedious to go into all these locations in LM to manually remove orphaned files/folders/drives etc. I would love to see something like "orphan tag" option applied globally where all location based LM would be checked and files/folders/drives no longer exist removed in one swoop.

Here are the places I hope to have this option applied:
-Address Bar & Go To
-Portable Files Association (remove if program's deleted)
-History
-Mini Tree
-Move/Copy/Backup To
-Recent Locations
-Recently Opened Files
-Recent Catalog
-Favorite Folders
-Favorite Files
-Aliases

mickey4mice wrote: I would love to see something like "orphan tag" option applied globally where all location based LM would be checked and files/folders/drives no longer exist removed in one swoop.

Hi and welcome to the XY forums!

I believe this has been discussed before but haven't searched for it...the main issue would be: how do you handle valid devices that just happen to be off-line at that time? Such as a USB hard drive that you plug in only for backups? Or network connections that may be used only at work with laptop but not at home? And so on....

Not existing at that moment doesn't always mean that it won't again exist in future and thus those locations become valid at that time.

Hi, thanks for the welcome!

Good point about offline drives, but I think as far as flash drives are concerned, once they are removed, the orphaned paths associated with them should be considered non-existent. The point being that any path exist in LM should be usable at any given time for back/forward/move/copy purposes. As for the offline network drives, would be useful to include an option letting users choose if they are considered "orphan".

Wouldn't it be nice to have auto check/clean of orphan paths? Say for xyp to check for and clean up orphans every 10 minutes but also keep the manual clean-up option open?

j_c_hallgren wrote:

mickey4mice wrote: I would love to see something like "orphan tag" option applied globally where all location based LM would be checked and files/folders/drives no longer exist removed in one swoop.

Hi and welcome to the XY forums!

I believe this has been discussed before but haven't searched for it...the main issue would be: how do you handle valid devices that just happen to be off-line at that time? Such as a USB hard drive that you plug in only for backups? Or network connections that may be used only at work with laptop but not at home? And so on....

Not existing at that moment doesn't always mean that it won't again exist in future and thus those locations become valid at that time.

mickey4mice wrote:Good point about offline drives, but I think as far as flash drives are concerned, once they are removed, the orphaned paths associated with them should be considered non-existent. The point being that any path exist in LM should be usable at any given time for back/forward/move/copy purposes.

Sorry, but on the flash/external drive situation, I have to disagree...I have a nbr of flash drives and have certain LM paths that only apply to that particular drive (i.e. PNY Attache silver vs Memorex vs PNY black, etc) -- yes, some of those types of usages you listed in orig post are more sensitive to orphan usage than others but many can be used as/when needed and not affect my processing.

And suppose you had a flash drive that you just finished using, and you removed it...a minute later, your requested 10-min orphan process ran and purged those flash paths...and a min later, you realized you needed that flash drive again...well, all those paths would be gone, right? Not good!

BTW, in future, it's best to only quote parts actually needed when possible to make thread shorter and more readable.

In that scenario, flash drive would have to be plugged in again in order for the path to be used again, right? Seems like a moot point then, once the path's orphaned, only re-attachment of the drive would make the path live again, and once attached, xyp would not treat the path as orphan, thus removal. Unless I'm missing something here?

j_c_hallgren wrote:And suppose you had a flash drive that you just finished using, and you removed it...a minute later, your requested 10-min orphan process ran and purged those flash paths...and a min later, you realized you needed that flash drive again...well, all those paths would be gone, right? Not good!

mickey4mice wrote:In that scenario, flash drive would have to be plugged in again in order for the path to be used again, right? Seems like a moot point then, once the path's orphaned, only re-attachment of the drive would make the path live again, and once attached, xyp would not treat the path as orphan, thus removal. Unless I'm missing something here?

You're correct in that while the drive is not attached, paths related to it could/might be considered orphans, but if the auto-cleanup process ran during the 2 min (in my scenario) that it was off, you'd then also lose those paths which you'd likely need again at the end of the 2 min when drive was reinstalled and thus then affect your usability of XY.

And to attempt to put some "last seen" times on these items and give them a 'cooling-off' period would be way too much tracking, I believe, and might even possibly affect performance.

Just trying to point out why sometimes what may seem to be an advantage may become a disadvantage.

Good point, I can do without timed auto-cleanup, but manual one-sweep orphan path clean-up is still a feature worth having

j_c_hallgren wrote:

mickey4mice wrote:In that scenario, flash drive would have to be plugged in again in order for the path to be used again, right? Seems like a moot point then, once the path's orphaned, only re-attachment of the drive would make the path live again, and once attached, xyp would not treat the path as orphan, thus removal. Unless I'm missing something here?

You're correct in that while the drive is not attached, paths related to it could/might be considered orphans, but if the auto-cleanup process ran during the 2 min (in my scenario) that it was off, you'd then also lose those paths which you'd likely need again at the end of the 2 min when drive was reinstalled and thus then affect your usability of XY.

And to attempt to put some "last seen" times on these items and give them a 'cooling-off' period would be way too much tracking, I believe, and might even possibly affect performance.

I have a suggestion for the tag data base management.
Just let xyporer put a tag data base on every disk including removable disks, let user specify the database locations, remove entry if the file is deleted immediately, if all files linked with a tag is deleted remove that tag too. so the data base is always with the disk, you can add databases when a new disk is mounted, this way both keep data base tidy and don't lose file path links.

I just notice that tags can be cleaned up inside the configuration of XYplorer.

Hope this feature can available for other items besides tags.

Well I for once would love a 'cleanup orphans' option for all items (especially those stored in the ini).
I would prefer it to be optional and selective (meaning you have to execute it, and you select what to clean), optionally with a list of items about to be cleaned to check/uncheck.
To make things more manageable XYplorer should have such items separated by:
A) Location:
1. Computer (specific computer).
2. Network Drive (specific computer & share name).
B) Type: Removable/Permanent.

Giving the user the ability to choose whether cleanup should not be run on specific drives and or type of drive and or location.
Also the user should be able to specify if a certain drives share the database with another (easily migrate when drive letter changes).
And the user should be able to specify if a certain computer shares the database with another (easily migrate on changes or share the info when you have copies on several machines).

Twisten wrote:Well I for once would love a 'cleanup orphans' option for all items (especially those stored in the ini).
I would prefer it to be optional and selective (meaning you have to execute it, and you select what to clean), optionally with a list of items about to be cleaned to check/uncheck.
To make things more manageable XYplorer should have such items separated by:
A) Location:
1. Computer (specific computer).
2. Network Drive (specific computer & share name).
B) Type: Removable/Permanent.

Giving the user the ability to choose whether cleanup should not be run on specific drives and or type of drive and or location.
Also the user should be able to specify if a certain drives share the database with another (easily migrate when drive letter changes).
And the user should be able to specify if a certain computer shares the database with another (easily migrate on changes or share the info when you have copies on several machines).

This sounds great!