Date Handling Problem on dates in the region of c.1904 c1925

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Paul,

exiftool -delete_original \\nas02\photo\pictures\2000-04\2000-04-01_0001.jpg

That command should work provided the following file exists:

\\nas02\photo\pictures\2000-04\2000-04-01_0001.jpg_original

What does this command give?:

dir \\nas02\photo\pictures\2000-04\2000-04-01_0001.jpg_original

- Phil

[Paul Barrett]

It gives:

C:\Windows\ExifTool>dir \\nas02\photo\pictures\2000-04\2000-04-01_0001.jpg_original
The system cannot find the file specified.

But that's just not right.  I can see the file in Explorer.  In fact I can see all 4,672 jpg_original files

Hm.  I think a PC reboot may be required since the command line won't even let me switch to the mapped drive y: - perhaps that's the cause of the issue.  I will reboot and let you know...

- Paul

[Phil Harvey]

Could the problem be the leading double backslashes?  I'm not familiar with that syntax.

Maybe something like this would work?:

dir y:\nas02\photo\pictures\2000-04\2000-04-01_0001.jpg_original

And if so, the exiftool command should be:

exiftool -delete_original y:\nas02\photo\pictures\2000-04\2000-04-01_0001.jpg

or this to delete them all:

exiftool -delete_original -r y:\nas02\photo\pictures\

but you should be sure your updates are good, or have backups before deleting all of the originals.

- Phil

[Paul Barrett]

\\ is the UNC pathname prefix for networked drives

OK so the problem is some sort of permissions issue.  When I ran cmd as admin I could not switch to network drives.  I started a normal cmd session and, with my regular user credentials, I was able to switch to the y: drive and to the specific directory where the files are located.  There I did a dir listing and there's the file

Directory of Y:\Pictures\2000\2000-04
24/09/2016  15:24         1,726,555 2000-04-01_0001.jpg_original

I am flummoxed.  All the permutations of the delete originals command are failing, regardless of whether I run cmd as admin or not, yet all the commands that created them in the first place worked flawlessly.

Is there any reason why I should not just delete them in explorer?

- Paul

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Paul,

Just go ahead and delete them in Explorer then.

I can't explain or reproduce the problem you are seeing.

- Phil

[Paul Barrett]

OK - let's just put this one in the NFI bucket

I will delete them in explorer.  I have backups with history running on these folders so I will have a fallback for 6 months.

Thanks for your help!

- Paul

[StarGeek]

When you have your command setup how you like it, you can add -overwrite_original to the command to skip the creation of the "_original" backup files.

[Paul Barrett]

Perfect.  Done!

- Paul