How to identify and delete obsolete PAM images

Client Software
1

Hi,

Having had Nitrosell a number of years, we have a large number of images in the PAM image directory that are now no longer referenced by active products. I have around 6,500 such images which I suspect are significantly slowing down our Sync as Sync seems to scan the entire directory rather than just grab images referenced by PAM.

Has anyone come up with a method to identify and delete such images?
Any recommendations from Nitrosell?

Thanks,
Emma

3 Likes
2

I would be interested in this, too. With hundreds of products changing seasonally, it would be nice to cull the old product out and speed things up.

3

Yes this would be very useful to us too, if there was a way to do this it would be great

4

Hi all,

Thanks for your interest. We have added this feature in our backlog. We will definitely let you know once it has been released.

Watch out this space for upcoming updates.

Thanks,
Franclin

5

Hi @franclin_foping,

Many thanks we look forward to that. Can it simply move images that arenā€™t referenced by active products to an archive subdirectory, and also do the same in alternate image directories.

We can then manually do the actual deletion of the unreferenced files when we are sure the image wonā€™t be needed again.

Thanks,
Emma

1 Like
6

To clarify Franclinā€™s comment, it has not been added directly to the backlog ā€“ that happens when weā€™re about to schedule a feature. It has been added as a suggestion to the roadmap.

Please bear in mind that, as Iā€™m sure you can gather from the forum, the suggestion list is rather lengthy.

If it does get scheduled, weā€™ll be sure to let you know in this topic.

Thanks for the further feedback Emma.

Kind regards,
Donogh

7

Bump! We are definitely in the same boat here. I donā€™t want to lose the images, but some kind of archive for ā€œdormantā€ image files would be greatā€”something that simply separates images for items that are not currently live on the site, but retains them so they are available if the item is put back on the site or so we can manually remove them entirely when no longer needed, as Emma noted.
Thank you!

8

I would be very interested to know if there have been any new developments with this. I can see this becoming a problem for us in the very near future.

9

It so happens that a version of PAM is currently under testing that supports automated image archiving.

@Bartosz.Remesz: can you please provide an update when the testing is done?

10

Hi all,

We are currently testing a new PAM functionality called Archiver, which is designed to identify and move unused product image files to a separate sub-folder created in the item images directory. Hopefully the feature will be ready to operate within a few weeks. I will get back to you with any update.

Kind regards,
Bartek

11

Most definitely interested in this! Our image directory has over 25K currently and only 60% of that is probably active items.

12

Donā€™t know if I would be to worried about 25,000 images but the sync does start to struggle when you get over 100,000. I was able to give the image archive a try this week and it worked really well (although a little slow). It reduced me from about 250,000 images down to about 115,000 images in about 5 days.

13

Thanks for the feedback Robby, glad you found it useful.

We have spent a lot of time optimising image synchronisation. The thing is we are limited by the operating system ā€“ Windows itself does not do a good job handling directories with that many files. In fact, most operating systems struggle in this scenario. By now, weā€™re probably close to the limit in how much faster we can make it.

To those who havenā€™t already, I would definitely recommend running the image removal tool in PAM.

14

I used regexbuddy and extracted the names from the nitrosell sync log them searched for them in the directory.

15

Where do I find the image archiver - I got the latest PAM I could - build 1695 but canā€™t see it?
Thanks

16

@Bartosz.Remesz, could you assist @emma please?

17

Hi @Bartosz.Remesz,
Same than @emma , can you explain how this feature works? We have just to update NsSync and Pam and let the softwares works? Do we have some options to modify or something to unlock first?

Regards

Damien

18

Hi all,

The Archiver tool is available in PAM version 2.1.50 build 1690 and later. In order to make it visible PAM needs to be launched in debug mode as described in the article below:

The feature will then become available in PAM > Tools (ā€˜Image Archiverā€¦ā€™).

Once you define your product image source directory in the Archiver window and click on ā€˜Archive Images!ā€™ the tool will first create a sub-folder called ā€˜Archivedā€™ in your item images directory and then will start identifying the files that are inactive and moving them to the folder.

Please be advised that when you run the process for the first time it may take days to archive the orphan images, depending on how many files there are in your pictures folder.

Kind regards,

Bartek

19

Working perfectly! Thanks !

20

You are very welcome.

Regards,

Bartek