If you have a very large collection of photos, and you are trying to sift a new batch of files into it, you may find that it can take quite a long while to do so.
What Contributes to Slow Sifting
There are two steps in sifting that contribute the most time:
- Fingerprinting
- Copying files
How long these steps take are most impacted by a few key elements:
- Number and size of input files
- Number and size of output files
- Speed of data transmission to inputs and outputs
- Deduplication Quality Preferences
Fingerprinting Speed
Every file that Silent Sifter discovers in an input or an output is fingerprinted, and then the fingerprint is stored in a local cache so that on subsequent sifts fingerprinting for the file is unnecessary (and therefore faster). Fingerprints are kept in the local cache until either the fingerprinting settings are changed, or the file is moved to a new file path - if either of those change, then the file is fingerprint is rebuilt on the next sift.
- The more files there are, the longer it will take.
- The larger the file size of the files, the longer it will take.
- The longer it takes to read the files (e.g. across a network link), the longer it will take
- The higher the quality of the deduplication, the longer it will take.
Speeding up Fingerprinting
To speed up fingerprinting, you can either:
- Sift files in smaller batches
- Sift files to/from a faster source or destination on your mac (e.g. a local hard drive instead of a NAS) to speed up read times
- Change deduplication settings to a faster speed on the preferences screen
Copying Speed
When Silent Sifter places a file from an input into an output, it does so by copying the file. SS copies the file in order to ensure that your files are always safe and untouched until you choose to remove them. That means that SS must read and then write the file, for each file that passes all filters and deduplication settings. This means:
- The more files there are, the longer it will take.
- The larger the file size of the files, the longer it will take.
- The longer it takes to read the files, the longer it will take
- The longer it takes to write the files, the longer it will take.
Speeding up Copying
The speed up copying, you can:
- Sift files in smaller batches
- Sift files to/from a faster source or destination on your mac (e.g. a local hard drive instead of a NAS) to speed up read/write times