With my GS grinding to halt during searches , I think it is time to repair it and remove some orphans etc by starting with the CTRL key selected.
However, I need to back up first but disk space has become an issue for me.
It seems that GS is using over 350GB on my hard drive and I do not have that much free space to back it up. THis sounds like a lot of data. Where can I look to remove unwanted data?
David
Whatâs in âData newâ? Looks like some kind of backup or clone?
Do you use Time Machine or CCC or Super Duper? Having an hourly/daily/weekly/etc backup for biz data is definitely recommended as HDs and SSDs to fail, and being able to restore from backup is one way to get the biz going again when things fail.
With HDs so cheap, if you want a dedicated CCC backup, I would say just pick up a 500GB+ drive and with GS quit, copy the GS Library [access the library folder by going to the GS Help menu and selecting âOpen Library Folderâ. Note that I said HDs, not SSDs, as memory [including SSDs] prices have skyrocketed but thankfully hard drives are still quite inexpensive.
If you donât use Time Machine, then grabbing a larger HD would be something Iâd do ASAP, and get TM going on your Mac so you can roll back to prior versions of software, documents, etc.
Yes Vince, I do or have most of the above.
I was suggesting that 363Gb is much larger than I would expect and I was asking the question of the GS team where I might look for file I can delete.
In the meantime, however, I have found at least pafrt of the size problem.
Firstly I emptied the GS Trash.
Next I did a random search with âdisplay items in trashâ turned off.
I found over 10,000 items that appear the the trash (deleted folder) but are actually not in there. I have deleted them.
See the attachment.
These appear after GS has been force quit. I have mentioned it before in this Forum but no solution was found.
However, even after removing these 10,000+ items, the GS size remains at 359Gb
David
What is in the âData newâ folder? That is not standard for my installs of GS9.x. It looks like maybe you created that as a backup at some point?
If youâre having to force quit GS, then yeah, a db rebuild will definitely benefit you. I have about 36GB and 95% of that space is eaten up by my images. But I would not delete things from any of the folders in Finder, as thatâs just asking for more issues. Best to make a snapshot with GS quit, onto an external drive, so you can quickly recover that snapshot should the database rebuild go sour.
If your images are JPEGs and are quite large, one thing you could try, with GS closed, is to put them through JPEGmini Pro, setting that up to replace the image. That will not cut down on the dimensions of an image, but it will greatly reduce the file size, and give you back space. I have a Hazel workflow that hooks into Retrobatch which removes the GPS data from the image, plus other exif data, writes my copyright info into exif, changes the max dimensions to be 1200x1200, and then feeds the images through to JPEGmini Pro.
For me, not only does this save disc space, but it also gives end users a much better experience as they donât have to wait for giant images to load if theyâre looking at the photos from my layout vs. the ones hosted on eBay. Also, it was a way to get around a bug in macOS/GS where by large [greater than 1200x1200] images looked blurry in the preview mode on GS.
Reducing the file size of product images really does save a ton of disc space, bandwidth, etc. And the quality difference is insane - you really canât tell the difference between a 3MB vs a 200KB jpeg after JPEGmini Pro has gone through it. The app keeps a stat running, and since I started using it it has saved over 21GB of space. I realize this doesnât solve your problem, but it may help keep your GS library folder smaller in the future [esp. if you batch images through it that are living on your system now].
You may be correct that this was created as a backup but it has files as recently as 2006. That is why I am checking with the GS Team to find out if it has any purpose in GS.
I have in the region of 70,000 listings, each with multiple TIF images.
I prefer to undertake much as I can in GS. Doing things outside of this environment, as you have suggested a number of times, is not an option.
I pay for GS and it is generally very reliable.
David
Oh gosh no. The only suggestion I gave for outside of GS was to optimize the jpegs. Surprised you can publish TIFFs as I didnât think web browsers supported viewing them. TIFFs are giant and meant for printing not for web browsing.
But as I said twice before - changing stuff outside of GS is asking for trouble. Your original post asked what you could get rid of from your library. Iâd say that you should stick with cleaning GS up but that duplicate folder is very suspect since thatâs not part of a normal install.
But yeah if your graphics are TIFFs then game over as far as drive space goes. Canât compress those and shocked eBay allows them!
TIFF files are much better for my archive outside of GS as they are scaleable. It is easy to go from TIF to JPG without losing resolution. The reverse is not so.
Ebay does not allow TIFS but GS does.I assume GS converts them.
David
GS doesnât convert them as far as I know and they should never be used for websites. Yes they have more data in them but they are uncompressed. Keep them in your digital asset manager and export web safe jpegs so that your customers donât have to wait for images to render, if they can see them at all. Thatâs like publishing RAW files. Thereâs no benefits and tons of drawbacks. Those are files meant to be âthe sourceâ like slides or negatives were back in the day and prints or jpegs were meant to be viewed.
Also remember that most eBay shoppers are viewing your items on smartphones. TIFFs donât help customers at all as they have tiny screens and eBay has limits on how big images show up in their gallery.
GS is not a DAM so storing these giant images there is not what it was designed to do. Use a digital asset manager.
Source: me. I have over a million digital and scanned images stored, and backed up locally and remotely from my 40+ years of photography.
I disagree with you.No one ever mentioned anything about publication. These files are 600 dpi and can be expanded as i wish. I can easily export to poorer quality jpgs if I need to publish them.
If ebay does not allow TIFs then GS must do some sort of conversion. If I drag and drop from GS, the file is a jpg.
Source: me. I too have millions of files of TIF quality and I cannot fault them. I can expand the to any size without loss of quality.
I am extremely happy with the way I am scanning and producing. 50 + years in IT.
Where do I find the size or amount of space that GS is using on my drives and backups? 3-4 years ago I reduced the size of GS by throwing away duplicates and very old listings line by line in GS. Keep in mind my total number of listings currently is 10,000 listings with the average of 10 pictures in each. I cut each listing down to 1 photo to have a record of the sold item. This improved GS speed and lag issues. I should do it again because its been awhile and hesitating and lags have returned. The spinning ball Devs tell me is resizing being done by GS(version 9.9.3 GarageSale changed to a different API for resizing images) so I am running 9.9.2 (still have spinning balls but 9.9.3 is where GS Devs told me they made the change). see Spinning wheel ball of DEATH is really choking use of GS
Why are you using TIFFs with GS? Why not export JPEGs for websites and for GS? Youâre using so much space. You have both TIFFs in GS and in your DAM? Why?
Go to the Help menu in GS. Pick âopen library folderâ. Finder opens. Go up one level and do command-I on the GarageSale folder.
You can use tools like whatsize or daisy disk to see what kinds of files inside that folder are taking the most space
BTW, I am running 9.9.2 as well. What helped me a ton was optimizing jpegs in JPEGmini Pro before adding them into GS. I explained my workflow above. I often have 20+ images per listing, and have more listings than you do in GS. I donât have any beachball status, even when searching. I did proactively run JPEGmini Pro through all images I had already put into GS [and on my WebDAV server] after I discovered what a difference that made. I do not cut down images per listing to 1 after something has been sold as I just donât have time for that [maybe a script could do that automatically but since after 30 days, a sale is a sale, I donât mind having the listing with all the images - plus eBay keeps them for 90 days. If a return comes in at 30 days, it is easy to re-list with all images intact].
I plan on updating to the latest GS this month as it is my slow season [or it normally is - for some reason people are still buying but normally February every year is when I get time to do R&D, hardware/software changes/updates, etc, etc.
If youâre seeing spinning beachballs - what does your memory pressure look like? Activity Monitor, memory tab. GS is using 137MB for me, far less than what Safari is using, but I also have 10 trillion tabs open. 
GS does saturate my slow DSL connection for its syncing feature, but I tend to blame my ISP on that more than GS [and it is easy enough to pause sync].
I also donât keep anything in my GS trash - once I delete something [usually due to a listing mistake on my part or when I batch re-list], I empty the trash immediately. Iâve read in the forums some people use the trash as a filing system, but to me that makes no sense as we donât use the trash to file things in real life - we use it to throw stuff out.
Iâm running 9.9.2 on macOS 14.7.5 FWIW, and Safari 18.4 [Safari version does affect the Live feature of GS - for me Safari 26 breaks a ton of stuff, so I have stayed on 18.4; very thankful one can update/roll back Safari w/o having to touch the OS version!]
I havenât dumped any photos in 3-4 years since I was having issues back then. Yes, it is horribly time consuming thatâs why I havenât done it and am waiting until speed becomes an issue.
Devs tell me that my spinning ball is fully the result of running 12.7.6 OS. And Safari canât be updated far enough to make a difference. I believe that the Devs told davidelliot sometime back that his issues are due to having a huge trash file. I empty daily when I remember to look. I wonder why that couldnât be automatic, or a setting, to keep the trash empty like OS now does?
Memory pressure is 28.15GB on GS. Devs traced the beachballs to GS resizing photos when I posted a spindump. 20 tabs open and and 25 APPS running on my dock.
Is the 28.15GB being used by GS only? [eg: GarageSale is in the Process Name column, and just to the right is how much memory it is using], or your total Memory Used as the bottom center shows?
I rarely use the Live tab/mode in GS, so for me, Safari versions do not matter, but I know that if you do use Live, it apparently does have some impact. I just normally keep Safari open in another screen [I have a 2 monitor setup, but on my laptop, I just keep them side by side]. Once I list something, I donât check the listing; I just use Safari to research prices or get info about the item I am selling. I know we all have different ways to list, etc - just saying how I use Safari.
I have OpenCore Legacy Patcher on my 2015 11â Core i7 MacBook Air, so it can run a macOS version greater than 12.7.6. Iâve had no issues with it, but I fully understand if that is something you resist. I would read the documentation and understand how one can roll back and such, as for me, it is not that big a deal to roll back if things are not working after patching. Depending on the model of Mac you have, there may be certain known limitations to the patcher [eg: graphic support etc]. Again, the website explains stuff very well, and for me, it has extended the life of several older Macs.
macOS âEmpty Trash Automaticallyâ is a great feature for those not used to emptying their trash, as it deletes files older than 30 days. GS does have a listing scheduler built in, but I think creating a schedule for the trash would take some time. One way, IMO, to help remind someone to empty the trash is to keep it open - when one notices their scroll bar getting super tiny, then itâs probably a sign that the trash has tons of stuff in it.
25 apps running in your Dock may be putting some pressure on your system - if you have 28GB used total, and 32GB is installed, I would look at Activity Monitor and see what the top few memory hogs are [clicking the memory column will sort by most used/least used]. The graph at the bottom of Activity Monitor, when memory is selected, should hopefully be green, not yellow-ish orange. Also Swap Used at the bottom of the window should hopefully be 0 or very near 0.
If the top app using the most memory is quit, does GS beachball still? It might be worth slowly quitting each app shown in the Memory view to see which one might be using enough memory that it is causing GS to beachball. Assuming that other apps are beach balling too, if memory is running low?
Thanks for all the tech support!
Iâve always been a Mac guy so I donât often remember âIf anything doesnât work right do the Microsoft solutionâŚrestart.â The memory is great now.
Sadly, restarting a Mac tends to be something that is required sometimes, though it never used to be. Typically one can restart an app or service.
I have a very random issue that Iâve spent hours researching - my Zebra printer, about once a month, wonât print. Stopping and starting the print spool doesnât help, even though the job is there. The only thing that works is a reboot and as soon as the âbongâ sound happens, the label printer prints the page out. Normally I would think restarting cups or the Mac interface to it would fix the issue, but just a restart.
One thing with rebooting - it could be that one of the 25 apps has a slow memory leak. Thatâs why just quitting each one one by one [when in the trouble shooting mood] could help and perhaps thereâs an updated version of the app that fixes the leak [that hopefully still supports macOS 12].
After 4 hours GS is currently running at 2.5GB so there maybe is an issue in GS?
Yo fly your kite and I will fly mine.
Regards David
0404499979
Someone replied to your post.
| rlmartin
February 10 |
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I havenât dumped any photos in 3-4 years since I was having issues back then. Yes, it is horribly time consuming thatâs why I havenât done it and am waiting until speed becomes an issue.
Devs tell me that my spinning ball is fully the result of running 12.7.6 OS. And Safari canât be updated far enough to make a difference. I believe that the Devs told davidelliot sometime back that his issues are due to having a huge trash file. I empty daily when I remember to look. I wonder why that couldnât be automatic, or a setting, to keep the trash empty like OS now does?
