Re-Index Images - Put Picasa3 on Another Drive - Leave Images in Place?

[Phil Pasteris]

Hi Team,

I have a C: SSD for my programs and twin 4tb RAID1 drives that hold all my images.

When I installed Picasa many years ago it was placed on the C: drive.

My C: drive is filling up and can't install the new Windows 10 upgrades.

Running TreeSize I noticed that the Picasa2 is taking up a bunch of space (See attached file).

I am actually running Picasa3, so I don't know if this is even a problem?  Can I delete the Picasa2 files?

Task list.

1. Install Picasa Starter on my new 8tb drive.
2. Leave all my photos in place on my 4tb drives.
3. Re-index Picasa3 on the 8tb drive.
4. Free up C: space now taken by Picasa2

Any suggestions appreciated.

Phil

[earlboss]

Hi Phil:

The Picasa2 folder is the database folder for Picasa3.  It was named when Picasa version was Picasa2 and was never changed to preserve compatability.

You can install PicasaStarter as called out in: https://sites.google.com/site/picasastartersite/quick-start-guide/picasastarter-installation .

In this guide we tell you how to install PS and make copies of the database for backup and to move it to another location.

It has been a while since I did all this but the basic idea is to make a copy of your database on your new drive and make it your main database for your photos from then on.

Once you have that done and working, you can open the original database and in the Picasa tools-folder manager, tell that database to only watch your C: drive Pictures folder.  This should cause Picasa to re-index your database and that should compact it to a few MB instead of many GB (depending on the number of photos in the pictures folder).

Again, it has been  years since I wrote the guide, so go slowly and make sure you understand the instructions, and ask if there is something unclear.

Best Regards,

Earl

[earlboss]

Hi Phil:

I assume you know about the Picasa FAQ website.

Here is a faq on rebuilding the database: https://sites.google.com/site/picasaresources/Home/Picasa-FAQ/picasa/troubleshooting/how-to-rebuild-database 

If the C: drive database doesn't shrink when you use the folder manager, this faq tells you how to delete and re-index the database.

Earl

[earlboss]

Hi Phil:

One thing that has caused people trouble in the past is that PicasaStasrter requires that Dot.Net version 3.5 be installed on Windows 10.

To install Dot.Net 3.5 on Windows 10:

1. Click on the Start button in the lower left corder on the task bar.
2.  Type: Windows Features on the keyboard which should show "Turn Windows Features on or off:" at the top of the search list.
3. Click on "Turn Windows Features on or off" which get you to the Windows Features list.
4. Click on the check box to the left of the selection: .NET Framework 3.5 so it is selected.
5. Click the OK button so windows will install the .Net framework.
6. PicasaStarter should then work.

Another thing:

If your C: drive is full you may have to make your backup copy of the database onto another drive since it looks like the database is almost 40 GB and you don't have much room on C:

Once you have a working copy of the database on another drive you can work on making the database on C: smaller as I said above.

Earl